Search
Full-text search over the whole vault, backed by SQLite FTS5 in a sidecar database. A five thousand file vault indexes cold in about three seconds and answers a keystroke in well under fifty milliseconds.
Query syntax
| Form | Finds |
|---|---|
attention | pages containing the word |
"is all you need" | the exact phrase |
attention head | pages containing both |
type:concept | pages whose frontmatter type is concept |
tag:llm | pages tagged llm, including llm/architecture |
path:wiki/ | pages under a folder |
updated>2026-06-01 | pages changed since a date |
updated<2025-01-01 | pages not changed since a date |
Filters combine with text and with each other: attention type:paper tag:llm path:entities/
is one query.
Results are ranked by bm25 and shown with the matching heading and a snippet, so you can tell which of five similar pages you meant before opening any of them.
The index
The database lives in .detangle/cache.db inside the vault. It is a cache: delete it and
it rebuilds on the next open. Nothing in it is needed to read the vault, and nothing about
the vault is stored anywhere else.
A file watcher keeps it current — debounced, with a periodic reconcile sweep in case the platform drops an event, which both Windows and macOS do under load.
See also Link Doctor.