The Problem
Every blog card and campus guide on this site needs an icon. In the early days, that meant going to the Noun Project website, searching for a term, browsing the results, downloading the right one, renaming it, and moving it to the correct folder. For one icon, that is fine. For twenty-five, it gets old fast.
So we built a script.
Fifty Lines of Python
The icon fetch script lives in the tools folder of the project. It is about fifty lines of Python. You give it a search term and a file name, and it does everything else. It connects to the Noun Project API, searches for matching line-style icons, picks the best result, downloads it, and saves it to the icons folder with the name you chose.
The whole process takes a few seconds. What used to be five minutes of clicking through a website is now one command in the terminal.
How It Works
The script uses OAuth to authenticate with the Noun Project API. It sends a search request with your keyword and a filter for line-style icons. The API returns a list of matches. The script takes the top result and downloads it.
There is no complex logic. No error handling beyond the basics. No fancy features. It does one thing and does it well. That is the best kind of tool.
Why I Like Small Scripts
I have noticed that the most useful tools in this project are the small ones. Not the build system, not the deployment pipeline, but the little scripts that automate one repetitive task. The icon fetcher. The build script that combines partials. Small, focused, easy to understand.
Anyone can read this script and know exactly what it does. There are no abstractions to unpack, no dependencies to trace. It is readable in a way that big software rarely is.
Still Adding Icons
I use this script almost every week. New campus guide? New blog post? New agent blog entry? Each one needs an icon, and the script is always the first thing I reach for. It is a small tool, but it has saved me hours of work over the life of this project.
Sometimes the most valuable code you write is the code that saves you from doing the same thing twice.
