Search Files with Indexly

Use Indexly search and regex commands to query indexed files with SQLite FTS5, filters, tags, fuzzy matching, profiles, and cache controls.
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Indexly searches the local index that was created by indexly index. It does not scan every file again during a search, so result quality depends on what was extracted, filtered, and stored during indexing.

Use search when you want ranked, high-signal discovery across documents, emails, source files, and structured text. Use regex when you need exact pattern matching.

Create or refresh the index first:

indexly index ./docs

For document-heavy folders, install the document extras and choose the OCR behavior intentionally:

python -m pip install "indexly[documents]"
indexly index ./docs --filetype .pdf
indexly index ./docs --ocr
indexly index ./docs --no-ocr

--ocr forces OCR for PDFs. --no-ocr disables PDF OCR entirely. Without either flag, Indexly uses the default PDF extraction policy.

Full-Text Search

The search command uses SQLite FTS5 over indexed content.

indexly search "error handling"
indexly search "invoice AND 2026"
indexly search "docker OR kubernetes"
indexly search "cache NOT redis"
indexly search "authentication NEAR failure" --near-distance 8

When a query does not contain explicit FTS operators, Indexly normalizes it as a safer literal phrase. Logical operators are opt-in and case-sensitive: use uppercase AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR when you want boolean search behavior. Lowercase English words such as and, or, not, and near stay part of the literal search text.

indexly search "search and replace"
indexly search "search AND replace"

The first command searches for the phrase search and replace. The second command searches for indexed content containing both search and replace.

Filters

Use filters to narrow the indexed result set before ranking:

indexly search "invoice" --filetype .pdf .docx
indexly search "meeting" --path-contains "projects/client-a"
indexly search "contract" --date-from 2026-01-01 --date-to 2026-03-31
indexly search "budget" --filter-tag finance

Search also supports metadata filters populated during extraction:

indexly search "ticket" --author "Mario Heidt"
indexly search "manual" --format PDF
indexly search "photo" --camera Canon
indexly search "inspection" --image-created 2026-03

Sorting Results

By default, full-text search results are sorted by SQLite FTS relevance. You can choose another ordering:

indexly search "invoice" --sort-by relevance
indexly search "invoice" --sort-by newest
indexly search "invoice" --sort-by oldest
indexly search "invoice" --sort-by path

newest and oldest use the indexed file modified timestamp. path sorts case-insensitively by file path. Sorting is available for indexly search; regex search remains pattern-focused and does not use FTS ranking.

Context, Cache, and Profiles

Increase or reduce the snippet window with --context:

indexly search "quarterly report" --context 80

By default, Indexly can reuse cached search results when they are still valid. Bypass cache reads and writes for a fresh query:

indexly search "policy" --no-cache

Save repeat searches as profiles:

indexly search "invoice" --filetype .pdf --save-profile invoice_pdf
indexly search "invoice" --profile invoice_pdf

Profiles store the search parameters and make repeated workflows easier to reproduce.

Search Index Maintenance

Use clear-search when stale paths or tagged batches should be removed from the local FTS5 search index without deleting source files.

Preview stale results under a moved folder:

indexly clear-search --path "V:/Hotline/OldCustomerFolder" --dry-run

Remove them after reviewing the plan:

indexly clear-search --path "V:/Hotline/OldCustomerFolder"

Remove all files matching any cleanup tag:

indexly clear-search --tag archive stale-index --dry-run

See Clear Search Results Safely for confirmation behavior, path and tag semantics, cache invalidation, and recovery steps.

Use fuzzy search when spelling or terminology may vary:

indexly search "authentcation" --fuzzy
indexly search "projetc plan" --fuzzy --fuzzy-threshold 85

Fuzzy search expands against the FTS vocabulary table. It is vocabulary-aware, not a raw filesystem scan.

Use regex for exact patterns:

indexly regex "(?i)password\s*="
indexly regex "\bINV-\d{6}\b" --filetype .txt .md
indexly regex "(?m)^timeout\s*=\s*\d+" --path-contains config

Regex search runs against indexed content and supports the same common filters as full-text search, including --filetype, --date-from, --date-to, --path-contains, --filter-tag, --context, --no-cache, --save-profile, and --profile.

Choosing a Mode

Need Command
Ranked concept discovery indexly search
FTS operators such as uppercase AND, OR, NOT, NEAR indexly search
Newest or oldest indexed matches first indexly search --sort-by newest
Misspelling-tolerant lookup indexly search --fuzzy
Exact syntax or identifiers indexly regex
Security or config audits indexly regex with filters

Next Steps

Search Internals and Advanced Usage

How Indexly turns indexed content into FTS5 and regex results, including query normalization, filters, snippets, cache behavior, and performance guidance.