A dedicated endpoint rather than a mode of /api/schools, because that
path filters and sorts 25,000 pandas rows per query while holding the
GIL — affordable once per search, not once per keystroke. A test asserts
the distinction directly by making load_school_data raise and requiring
the endpoint to answer anyway.
Nothing errors on ordinary input: a short query, no matches, or
Typesense being down are all 200 with an empty list.
Cached deliberately. Prefix queries repeat enormously across users and
school names change once a year, so s-maxage plus the existing ETag
middleware turns most keystrokes into 304s.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015mWQnpye9F299NVRCCSRvj
