Search Internals and Advanced Usage

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This page explains what happens after you run indexly search or indexly regex. It is intended for users who want predictable results and developers who need to reason about query behavior.

Search Pipeline

Files are indexed into SQLite tables and FTS5 virtual tables.
Extracted human-readable text is filtered before it reaches search.
Semantic metadata can be weighted into searchable content.
Technical metadata is stored for filtering and inspection, not blindly injected into FTS.
The CLI parses search flags and builds a safe query plan.
Results are ranked or matched, converted to snippets, enriched with tags, and optionally cached.

The important boundary is that search reads the index. It does not re-extract documents while answering a query.

Search Files with Indexly

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Before You Search

Create or refresh the index first:

Regex on Project Indexly

Search Internals and Advanced Usage

Search Pipeline

Search Files with Indexly

Before You Search