zetl

SPEC-002: Full-Text Search

Adds zetl search for content search across vault Markdown files. See Search Command for usage.

(given spec-002-documented)

Motivation

The Similar Command does page-name matching, not content search. Users need to find where specific text appears in their vault.

Key requirements

IDRequirement
REQ-013Full-text content search
REQ-014Body-text-only search (skip frontmatter/code by default, --all override)
REQ-015Regex mode
REQ-016Case-sensitive mode

Performance targets

  • Search <= 2 seconds for 10,000 files
  • Memory <= 50 MB above baseline

Design decision

ADR-002 Search Without Index — index-free scan chosen over inverted index for simplicity and correctness. The trade-off is acceptable because:

  • Most vaults have fewer than 10,000 files
  • Scanning is I/O-bound and fast on SSDs
  • No index build step or invalidation logic needed

Content filtering

By default, search skips frontmatter and fenced code blocks to focus on prose. This prevents noise from YAML metadata and code examples. The --all flag overrides this behavior.

Relationship to similar

similar matches page names via architecture/SimHash. search matches page content via direct scanning. They serve different use cases.

See also: Spec Index, Search Command, ADR-002 Search Without Index

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