Henner M. Kruse
89 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
89 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
# Search Strategy for the Obsidian Vault (manual fallback)
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The three wrapper scripts (`scripts/vault_index.sh`, `scripts/vault_search.sh`,
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`scripts/vault_backlinks.sh`) cover the common cases and are the only
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commands whitelisted by `/setup`. Use the raw commands below only when the
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scripts genuinely don't cover what's needed (e.g. a one-off query shape they
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don't support). These are **not** whitelisted, so each one will prompt the
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user for confirmation — that's intentional, since they aren't confined to
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the configured vault the way the scripts are.
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## 1. Get an overview of the structure
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```bash
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# Folder structure (= topical categories per the user's own convention)
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find <vault> -type d -not -path '*/.obsidian*' -not -path '*/.git*' | sort
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# Do "index"/"MOC" (Map of Content) files exist? These often bundle links
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# on a topic and are a good entry point.
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find <vault> -iname '*index*.md' -o -iname '*moc*.md' -o -iname '*overview*.md'
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```
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## 2. Full-text search
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Prefer `rg` (ripgrep), it's much faster and respects `.gitignore`:
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```bash
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# Basic search, case-insensitive, with file names and line numbers
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rg -i -n "<search-term>" <vault> -g '!.obsidian' -g '!.git'
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# Only file names of matches (for a quick overview)
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rg -i -l "<search-term>" <vault>
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# Combine multiple terms (AND via chained greps)
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rg -i -l "term-a" <vault> | xargs rg -i -l "term-b"
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```
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Fallback without ripgrep:
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```bash
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grep -ril "<search-term>" <vault> --include='*.md'
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```
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## 3. Use frontmatter and tags
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Obsidian frontmatter is a YAML block at the top of a file between `---`.
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Tags can live there (`tags: [topic-a, topic-b]`) or inline in the text
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(`#topic-a`).
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```bash
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# All notes with a specific tag in the frontmatter
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rg -l '^tags:.*topic-a' <vault>
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# All notes with a specific inline tag
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rg -l '#topic-a\b' <vault>
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# View the frontmatter of a single file (the first 15 lines are usually enough)
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head -n 15 "<path-to-file>.md"
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```
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If the vault uses a consistent tag scheme (e.g. `status/open`,
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`system/hostname`), use it as an additional filter dimension, not just
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full text.
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## 4. Wikilinks and backlinks
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`[[NoteName]]` points to another note. For relationships between
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topics/entities, backlinks are often more informative than full-text
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search:
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```bash
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# Which notes link to "note-name"?
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rg -n '\[\[note-name(\||\]\])' <vault>
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# List all outgoing links of a specific note
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rg -o '\[\[[^]]+\]\]' "<path-to-file>.md"
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```
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For troubleshooting-style questions, it's often worth following 1–2 link
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hops from the topically closest note (e.g. hardware note → linked
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network note → linked incident note) instead of only matching full text
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in isolation.
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## 5. Large vaults
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If there are too many matches: first narrow down to the most plausible
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subfolder from the structure overview (step 1), then search in detail.
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Don't read every matching file in full by default — check grep context
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first (`rg -C 3 ...`) and only open whole files when genuinely needed.
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