qmd - Quick Markdown Search

Local search engine for Markdown notes, docs, and knowledge bases. Index once, search fast.

When to use (trigger phrases)

• "search my notes / docs / knowledge base"
• "find related notes"
• "retrieve a markdown document from my collection"
• "search local markdown files"

Default behavior (important)

• Prefer qmd search (BM25). It's typically instant and should be the default.
• Use qmd vsearch only when keyword search fails and you need semantic similarity (can be very slow on a cold start).
• Avoid qmd query unless the user explicitly wants the highest quality hybrid results and can tolerate long runtimes/timeouts.

Search modes

Mode	Command	Speed	Use case
BM25 (default)	qmd search	Instant	Keyword matching
Vector	qmd vsearch	~1 min cold	Semantic similarity
Hybrid	qmd query	Slowest	LLM reranking (skip unless requested)

Common commands

qmd search "query"              # default - fast keyword search
qmd search "query" -c notes     # search specific collection
qmd search "query" -n 10        # more results
qmd search "query" --json       # JSON output
qmd search "query" --all --files --min-score 0.3

Useful options

• -n <num>: number of results
• -c, --collection <name>: restrict to a collection
• --all --min-score <num>: return all matches above a threshold
• --json / --files: agent-friendly output formats
• --full: return full document content

Retrieve documents

qmd get "path/to/file.md"       # Full document
qmd get "#docid"                # By ID from search results
qmd multi-get "journals/2025-05*.md"
qmd multi-get "doc1.md, doc2.md, #abc123" --json

Maintenance

qmd status                      # Index health
qmd update                      # Re-index changed files
qmd embed                       # Update embeddings

Setup (if not installed)

# Install
bun install -g https://github.com/tobi/qmd

# Create collection
qmd collection add /path/to/notes --name notes --mask "**/*.md"
qmd context add qmd://notes "Description of this collection"  # optional
qmd embed  # one-time to enable vector + hybrid search

Performance notes

• qmd search is typically instant
• qmd vsearch can be ~1 minute on cold start (loads local LLM for query expansion)
• qmd query adds LLM reranking on top of vsearch, even slower