qmd/CLAUDE.md

QMD - Quick Markdown Search

Note: This project uses bd (beads) for issue tracking. Use bd commands instead of markdown TODOs. See AGENTS.md for workflow details.

Use Bun instead of Node.js (bun not node, bun install not npm install).

Commands

qmd collection add . --name <n>   # Create/index collection
qmd collection list               # List all collections with details
qmd collection remove <name>      # Remove a collection by name
qmd ls [collection[/path]]        # List collections or files in a collection
qmd context add [path] "text"     # Add context for path (defaults to current dir)
qmd context list                  # List all contexts
qmd context rm <path>             # Remove context
qmd get <file>                    # Get document content (fuzzy matches if not found)
qmd multi-get <pattern>           # Get multiple docs by glob or comma-separated list
qmd status                        # Show index status and collections
qmd update                        # Re-index all collections
qmd embed                         # Generate vector embeddings (requires Ollama)
qmd search <query>                # BM25 full-text search
qmd vsearch <query>               # Vector similarity search
qmd query <query>                 # Hybrid search with reranking (best quality)

Collection Management

# List all collections
qmd collection list

# Create a collection with explicit name
qmd collection add ~/Documents/notes --name mynotes --mask '**/*.md'

# Remove a collection
qmd collection remove mynotes

# List all files in a collection
qmd ls mynotes

# List files with a path prefix
qmd ls journals/2025
qmd ls qmd://journals/2025

Context Management

# Add context to current directory (auto-detects collection)
qmd context add "Description of these files"

# Add context to a specific path
qmd context add /subfolder "Description for subfolder"

# Add global context to all collections (system message)
qmd context add / "Always include this context"

# Add context using virtual paths
qmd context add qmd://journals/2024 "Journal entries from 2024"

# List all contexts
qmd context list

# Remove context
qmd context rm qmd://journals/2024
qmd context rm /  # Remove global context

Options

# Search & retrieval
-c, --collection <name>  # Restrict search to a collection (matches pwd suffix)
-n <num>                 # Number of results
--all                    # Return all matches
--min-score <num>        # Minimum score threshold
--full                   # Show full document content

# Multi-get specific
-l <num>                 # Maximum lines per file
--max-bytes <num>        # Skip files larger than this (default 10KB)

# Output formats (search and multi-get)
--json, --csv, --md, --xml, --files

Development

bun qmd.ts <command>   # Run from source
bun link               # Install globally as 'qmd'

Architecture

• SQLite FTS5 for full-text search (BM25)
• sqlite-vec for vector similarity search
• Ollama for embeddings (embeddinggemma) and reranking (qwen3-reranker)
• Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) for combining results

Important: Do NOT run automatically

• Never run qmd collection add, qmd embed, or qmd update automatically
• Never modify the SQLite database directly
• Write out example commands for the user to run manually
• Index is stored at ~/.cache/qmd/index.sqlite

Do NOT compile

• Never run bun build --compile - it overwrites the shell wrapper and breaks sqlite-vec
• The qmd file is a shell script that runs bun qmd.ts - do not replace it