Shorthand3 is, for me, a way to quickly find files and programs and open/edit/run them.
Shorthand can be used to do more than that though, through plugins.

Goal is to make Shorthand as easy and accessible to use for as many people as possible.

For the searching the script functions as a frontend for "everything.exe" and it's commandline brother "es.exe" (http://www.voidtools.com).
Everything.exe does not support searching inside files, so for that Shorthand uses FindStr.exe (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490907.aspx) 
For most other things I've built my own script.

I've been building and re-building Shorthand for a few years now, slowly building my skills in autohotkey scripting.
However, several other launchers have influenced and inspired it, they are (in no particular order):
- Launchy (http://www.launchy.net/)
- Find-and-Run-Robot (https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/)
- 7plus (http://code.google.com/p/7plus/)