Writing a Search

A search has two choices: how its text matches, and whether it searches by words, by meaning, or both. This page shows each choice with a real search. Every example ran on 2026-10-12 against an index of a crawl of the Kubernetes documentation (kubernetes.io/docs, about 1,200 pages), with the default of 10 results, and shows the first three. Each searched by words only unless it says otherwise, with the reranking model’s Fuse order, which is the default. Fewer results can change the order, because the reranking model then scores fewer matches.

The text of a search is always literal. No character is an operator, so --dry-run=server is searched for as it is written.

Four ways to match

On the console, Find offers these as the words, the exact phrase, the words, allowing typos and a pattern (one term). In a request, they are "match": "words", "exact", "fuzzy" and "regex".

Words

The words in any order and in any form: deployments also finds deployment. A page that holds all the words as a phrase ranks higher. A page that holds a code exactly as typed, such as kubectl or --dry-run, ranks much higher.

When the text holds two or more words that carry meaning, a page must hold at least two of them, or one code exactly as typed. Small words such as “a” and “the” do not count.

roll back a deployment found:

1. Performing a Rolling Update — “To roll back the deployment to your last working version, use the rollout undo subcommand…”
2. Update a Deployment Without Downtime — “kubectl rollout undo deployment/nginx-deployment”
3. Deployments — “…when you roll back to an earlier revision, only the Deployment’s Pod template part is rolled back.”

Exact

The words together and in this order, in the text of a page. Each word must be as typed: an exact search does not find other forms of a word. Use it for a command, a product name or an error message.

kubectl rollout undo found the page kubectl rollout undo, the kubectl command reference (titled GETTING STARTED), and Perform a Rollback on a DaemonSet.

Fuzzy

Each word, or a word one typo away from it. A typo is one letter added, missing or changed, or two letters swapped.

Each typo is corrected to the word the index’s pages use most that is one typo away, or two for a word of 7 letters or more. When every word corrects, the search is the corrected words, and it ranks exactly as they do: kubernets namespase finds what kubernetes namespace finds, in the same order, and deploymnt puts Deployments first, as deployment does. A word that corrects to nothing still finds a word one typo away from it or from its root.

Regex

The text is a pattern that must match one whole word of the page. Upper and lower case match the same. A word here can be a code such as kube-proxy or snake_case, or a part of it, such as kube.

kube-(proxy|scheduler) found Good practices for Dynamic Resource Allocation as a Cluster Admin, Installing Addons and Cluster Architecture. kube-.* finds every word that starts with kube-.

A pattern cannot hold a space, because it matches one word. Begin a pattern with a few fixed letters: a pattern that could match too many words is refused, in these words:

query.text is too broad a pattern to search: start it with a few fixed letters and use fewer wildcards, as deploy.* rather than .*a.{20}

A pattern the search cannot read is refused too, with the place it stopped: kube-(proxy gets “error: unclosed group”. A visitor reads the same advice without the field name, and “This is not a pattern the search can read. Check its brackets and backslashes, or search by words.” for a pattern the search cannot read.

Words, meaning, or both

Each search can read the words of a page, its meaning, or both. On the console this is By: Words only, Meaning only or Both. In a request it is "mode": "text", "semantic" or "hybrid", the default.

• Words finds the text as the match above says. It finds an exact name, such as a command-line flag, that meaning can miss.
• Meaning finds a passage that says the same thing in other words. It needs words that carry meaning, so it does not run for a pattern alone. It runs only on an index with Search by meaning as well as by words on.
• Both runs the two at once and ranks their results together. This is how a loop’s own searches run.

how do I go back to the version that worked, by meaning only, found the kubectl command reference (GETTING STARTED), StatefulSets and Update a Deployment Without Downtime. The third is at the passage “If a new version introduces issues, you can roll back to a previous revision.”, which shares almost no words with the search.

A search by meaning also embeds its text once, at the index’s embedding price. See What an index costs.

The reranking model

After the words and the meaning find their matches, a reranking model can score each match against the search, put the best first, and hide the matches it scores too weak. Your account chooses this for each kind of searcher under Settings > Search order; see How results are ordered.

What the answer says about it:

• When it hides matches, the answer says how many, for example “3 matches were too weak to show”.
• When it would hide every match, it hides none: the answer is the plain order, and says “Showing the closest matches by words and meaning.”
• It never hides a match that holds the text exactly as typed, such as WT-30.
• It does not run for a pattern, because a pattern holds no words to score by. The answer then says “the query holds no natural-language text to score the results by; the results are in the plain order”.

By fuzzy match, the reranking model scores the corrected words, so a typo that corrects is scored as the word it corrects to, and deploymnt is ordered as deployment is. A typo that corrects to nothing is scored as typed, and the model can score good matches too weak because of it. Fix the typo, or send "rerank": false where the request takes it.

What each searcher may send

A page you build with the React SDK’s useSearch hook may send all four; its SearchBox shows them as Match, and matches offers fewer. The requests, the answers and the refusals of the two APIs are on Search API.

A loop’s agent writes its own searches, and it may also:

• join searches with all (each must match), any (one must match) and not (must not match);
• search one part of a page: its title, heading, body or url;
• give separate text for the meaning half, with semantic.

You do not write these. To steer what a loop searches, say in its instructions which index holds what; see Letting a Loop Search.