Context

SilverBullet had no built-in full-text Search. Users relied on Silversearch, a third-party library whose license keeps it out of core.

The obvious design would follow ADR/001 Offline-First PWA and ADR/007 Core Application Logic on the Client: index and search in the client, so search keeps working offline. Silversearch shows this can work, but it is expensive. Every client builds and stores its own full-text index of the whole space.

Revisions already set a precedent: they live in server-side git and aren’t available offline in the Server’s web client. Running git in the browser and syncing the full history to every client wasn’t worth what it would buy.

Decision

Search runs on the server only. The server keeps one index per space, updates it as pages change, and answers queries from any connected client.

  • Full-text search uses tantivy, a Rust search library similar to Lucene. It is always on and fast enough for search-as-you-type.
  • Semantic search is a second, opt-in engine (Admin > Search). It embeds page content with a model that runs locally on the server, and also powers the “Related Pages” widget. It is off by default because you have to download a model first, and indexing a large space can take a long time. No content ever leaves the server.

Consequences

Positive

  • The space is indexed once, not once per client.
  • Search quality isn’t capped by the browser. A native search library and local embedding models aren’t practical to run in every client.

Negative / trade-offs

  • No search offline in the Server’s web client. This deliberately deviates from ADR/001 Offline-First PWA. Don’t “fix” it without revisiting this ADR.
  • The server is no longer just a file store. ADR/010 Rust Backend describes a server that does very little; search adds indexing work, disk space for the index and, with semantic search on, model inference.

Alternatives considered

  • Client-side full-text index (the Silversearch approach). Rejected as the default because every client pays the full indexing cost. Silversearch stays useful for people who need search offline in the web client, so the two coexist.
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