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Search Second Brain

Search your Obsidian vault using qmd's semantic search (combines BM25 + vector similarity + reranking).

Prerequisites

• qmd must be installed and available in PATH
• A qmd collection must be configured for your vault

Step 1: Check Prerequisites

Verify qmd is available:

which qmd

If not found, inform user:

qmd is not installed. Install it via:
  bun add -g qmd
Then configure a collection:
  qmd collection add ~/path/to/vault --name second-brain

Step 2: Load Configuration

Get the qmd collection name via sb:

npx @techpickles/sb config qmd-collection

This returns the configured collection name (defaults to second-brain if not set).

Verify the collection exists:

qmd collection list

If collection doesn't exist, inform user which collections are available and suggest adding one.

Step 3: Execute Search

If no argument provided: Ask: "What would you like to search for?"

Run the search:

qmd query "{query}" -c {collection} -n 10 --json

Step 4: Present Results

Parse JSON output. Each result has:

• file: qmd://{collection}/{path} - strip the qmd://{collection}/ prefix
• score: 0.0-1.0 - convert to percentage
• title: document title from frontmatter or first heading
• snippet: matching content with diff-like context markers (strip @@ ... @@ lines)

Present results clearly:

## Search Results for "{query}"

1. **{title}** (93%)
   `{path relative to vault}`
   > {cleaned snippet preview, 2-3 lines max}

2. **{title}** (51%)
   ...

Include:

• Title from the result
• Relevance score as percentage (score × 100)
• File path relative to vault (strip qmd://collection/ prefix)
• Snippet preview (clean up diff markers, show meaningful content)

If no results, suggest:

• Try different keywords
• Check if vault has been indexed (qmd update && qmd embed)

Step 5: Offer Follow-up Actions

After showing results, offer to:

• Read a result - Use qmd get "qmd://{collection}/{path}" to retrieve full content
• Search again - Try different or refined terms