arc-search

arc-search is a skill for Claude Code from cwensel/arcaneum. It costs 67 tokens per session (831 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A search skill for indexed collections of code, documents, PDFs, and other text. It supports meaning-based search and exact-word search.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to search knowledge bases, codebases, documentation, corpora, and archived files with the arc command.
Why use it?
It helps choose the right kind of search for a question, concept, function name, error message, or other specific text.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the arc plugin — 5 skills, 10 commands shipped together

Good fit Use it to search knowledge bases, codebases, documentation, corpora, and archived files with the arc command.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cwensel/arcaneum/arc-search
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add cwensel/arcaneum --skill arc-search
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cwensel/arcaneum

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install arc, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 skills, 10 commands.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for arc-search

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cwensel/arcaneum/arc-search/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cwensel/arcaneum/arc-search)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cwensel/arcaneum/arc-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cwensel/arcaneum/arc-search/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for arc-search

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cwensel/arcaneum/arc-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cwensel/arcaneum/arc-search.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 67 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 831 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00067 $0.00831
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00415
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00166
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00083

Measured 9d ago against content hash 14a03bfe095b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

arc-search scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude-plugin/skills/arc-search/SKILL.md · 98 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 98 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

A corpus is dual-indexed: semantic search hits Qdrant, full-text search hits MeiliSearch. Both are first-class — pick the one that matches the query, and use both when unsure.

Choose the right mode

Use semantic when the query is:

  • Conceptual or paraphrased ("how does auth work")
  • A natural-language question
  • About meaning or intent
  • Cross-domain ("rate limiting strategies")

Use text (full-text) when the query is:

  • An exact identifier, symbol, error string, or file name
  • A specific function name, class, CLI flag, or env var
  • A literal phrase the user expects to appear verbatim
  • A known acronym, ticket ID, version string, or quoted text

When unsure, run BOTH and merge results. Full-text is cheap and often surfaces hits semantic misses (rare tokens, code symbols, exact error messages). Do not default to semantic alone.

Discover what's available

arc collection list                    # show every corpus/collection
arc corpus info MyCorpus               # inspect one corpus (both sides)

Semantic search (Qdrant)

arc search semantic "QUERY" --corpus NAME [OPTIONS]

Options:

  • --corpus NAME — repeat for multi-corpus search (--corpus A --corpus B)
  • --limit N — number of results (default small; raise for broad surveys)
  • --offset N — pagination
  • --score-threshold 0.0-1.0 — drop low-confidence hits
  • --filter "key=value" or --filter '{"key":"value"}' — metadata filter
  • --vector-name NAME — pick a specific embedding model (auto-detected otherwise)
  • --json — structured output for parsing
  • -v / --verbose — show scores and metadata

Full-text search (MeiliSearch)

arc search text "QUERY" --corpus NAME [OPTIONS]

Options:

  • --corpus NAME — repeat for multi-corpus search
  • --limit N, --offset N — pagination
  • --filter "key=value" or --filter '{"key":"value"}' — metadata filter
  • --json, -v — same as semantic

Note: full-text has no --score-threshold or --vector-name (no embeddings involved).

Read the full file on GitHub · 98 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 98 lines · 67 tokens per session scan A 14a03bfe095b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

arc-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository cwensel/arcaneum (7 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 67 tokens to every session and 831 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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