Searching your vault

Cuaderno keeps a full-text index of every note, so you can find anything fast — ranked best-first, with filters by type, date, and portfolio. The command is cdno search.

Basic search

cdno search "preconditioner"
cdno search "sparse attention"     # multiple words are ANDed

The query is matched case-insensitively and terms are combined with AND. Quotes and operators are treated as literal words, not search syntax. Results come back ranked, best match first.

Filter the results

# Only one note type:
cdno search "ablation" --type evidence

# Within a date window (inclusive):
cdno search "mesh" --from 2026-03-01 --to 2026-03-31

# Only inside one portfolio:
cdno search "speedup" --portfolio sparse-vs-dense-attention-ood

# Cap the number of hits (default 20):
cdno search "todo" --limit 5

Filters combine, so you can scope tightly:

cdno search "preconditioner" --type evidence --portfolio sparse-vs-dense-attention-ood --from 2026-01-01

Scripting with --json

--json returns the ranked hits as a JSON array — each with path, note_type, title, snippet, and score — ready for jq or another tool:

cdno search "speedup" --json | jq -r '.[].path'

See JSON output for the exact shape.

When search feels stale

Search reads the SQLite index, which is reconciled automatically on every run. If results ever look out of date (e.g. after a bulk external edit), rebuild it explicitly:

cdno reindex

The Markdown files are always the source of truth; the index is just a rebuildable cache (see Business rules).

Next: Customising templates and frontmatter — tailor how notes are scaffolded and which frontmatter fields they require.

For exhaustive detail on any command, see the CLI reference.