name: vault-search
description: Deep search the Obsidian vault with term expansion. Use when simple grep misses relevant content or when searching broad topics.
user_invocable: false

Vault Search

Comprehensive vault search that expands terms and checks multiple locations.

When to Use

• Simple grep returned few/no results but you suspect content exists
• Searching a broad topic (e.g., "interview", "AML", "strategy")
• Need to find all related notes, not just exact matches

Search Strategy

1. Check the Index First

Read [[Vault Index]] to identify which section/hub notes are relevant.

2. Expand Search Terms

3. Search Locations

# Top-level notes
grep -il "term" ~/notes/*.md

# Key subdirectories
grep -ril "term" ~/notes/Articles/
grep -ril "term" ~/notes/memory/
grep -ril "term" ~/notes/patterns/

4. Check Hub Notes

For any topic, check its hub notes (listed in Vault Index) which link to related content.

5. Follow Links

After finding initial matches, check their [[wikilinks]] for related content.

Output Format

## Search: [topic]

### Direct Matches
- [[Note 1]] — brief description
- [[Note 2]] — brief description

### Related (via hub notes)
- [[Note 3]] — found via [[Hub Note]]

### Subdirectories
- Articles/relevant-article.md
- memory/relevant-memory.md

Anti-Patterns

• Don't grep the entire vault recursively — too slow, too much noise
• Don't stop at first match — related content often scattered
• Don't ignore subdirectories — Articles/, memory/, patterns/ have useful content

Related Skills

• vault-pathfinding — Standard file paths and conventions
• skills-design — How skills reference vault content