Searching your folder
One search covers the whole knowledge base — PDFs, EPUB and Kindle books, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Markdown — by their text, not their file names. A result is a place: click it and the document opens on the sentence, highlighted.
Opening search
Edit → Search Knowledge Base…, or the search icon in the sidebar. Type, and results appear as you go.
Two sections, no mode to choose
| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Relevant content | Passages ranked by how much of what you typed they cover — marked High, Medium or Background. They need not contain your exact phrase or every word. |
| Literal matches | Every place the words you typed appear, highlighted, with a count across the folder. |
The shape of the query decides which leads: a sentence or a question puts relevant content first, a word or short phrase puts literal matches first. A section with nothing in it says so in one line, so an empty result is never mistaken for an empty folder.
Each file is one card, topped with a line on what the file is about, so forty hits in one book do not bury the single hit in your notes. Show full passage expands an excerpt in place.
Exact matches only
Put a phrase in quotes, or turn on Literal matches only. Match case applies to literal matches.
Operators
Combine freely; all of them are ANDed together:
| Operator | Matches |
|---|---|
path: | Part of the folder |
file: | File name |
tag: | A tag |
line:( … ) | Words on the same line |
section:( … ) | Words under the same heading |
[key:value] | A note's front-matter property |
path: and tag: suggest as you type, and Explain search terms spells out in plain language
what a query will match. A query with an operator or quotes shows literal matches only. OR,
negation and regular expressions are not supported.
Letting the AI re-pick
Let AI re-pick searches again more deeply, has the AI read the candidates against what you meant, and keeps the ones that fit. It takes a few seconds and spends a little credit. When a sentence-length query finds nothing that clearly matches, it runs on its own and says so; Undo brings the original results back.
Sorting, filtering and bookmarks
Sort by best match, file name, or when a file was modified or created. High shows only highly relevant results. Bookmark this search keeps it next to your bookmarked files, one click from running again.
Why it cannot find something
| Symptom | Usually |
|---|---|
| A PDF you can see never comes up | It is a scan with no text layer — recognise it. The panel says how many files are in that state. |
| A file you just added is missing | It is still being read in. The next search after that finishes will see it. |
| "Only part of it was searched in depth" | A large library. Use a more specific wording, or narrow with path:. |
| A question in different words finds little | Relevant content ranks by shared words, not by embeddings. Try the words your source would use, or let the AI re-pick. |
| A file hidden from AI shows up | Expected — hiding is about the AI, not about you. It is labelled. |
Search or ask?
Search hands you the passages and you judge them. Asking the assistant gets you an answer with citations back to the page. Underneath it is the same search — when the AI looks through your folder, it uses the same ranking you see here. Searching and opening your own files is local and spends nothing; only the AI re-pick does.