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So it's like Alfred workflows for Spotlight? This stands or falls with the plugins that will get developed by its users; one of which Alfred is thriving [1]

[1] http://www.packal.org/

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It's primarily an API on which developers can build plugins in Python (though doing a lot of useful stuff actually requires calling out to Applescript, of all things). There's no visual workflow-builder like in Alfred, although you _can_ set up triggers for Automator workflows.

Why are Flashlight plugins written in Python? (I'm asking out of curiosity; I like it.)

JS and Ruby are bundled with OS X as well and Apple started offering some JavaScript APIs in 10.10 for stuff that could previously only be done with AppleScript.

No particular reason. The API currently involves importing `plugin.py` files and calling functions in them, which makes it a bit simpler, but it should be possible to bridge with other languages. I've considered using Javascript for Automation, but there isn't a huge amount of documentation around it, so it hasn't been that valuable.

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