search syntax#

a reference for the query syntax at pub-search.waow.tech.

basics#

terms are OR'd together — a query matches documents containing any of the words. the last word gets prefix matching for a type-ahead feel.

you type	what runs	why
`cat dog`	`cat OR dog*`	matches docs with "cat" or "dog" (or "dogs", "dogma", etc.)
`crypto`	`crypto*`	prefix match: finds "crypto", "cryptocurrency", etc.

wrap words in double quotes for exact phrase matching — FTS5 requires the words to appear adjacent and in order.

you type	what runs
`"machine learning"`	`"machine learning"`
`python "machine learning" tutorial`	`python OR "machine learning" OR tutorial*`
`"exact phrase" python`	`"exact phrase" OR python*`

the last token only gets a prefix * if it's a bare word — phrases are never prefix-expanded.

unclosed quotes are treated as phrases: "hello world → "hello world".

beyond the query text, you can filter results by:

author: type @handle in the search box (e.g., @zat.dev up). quote to search literally: "@zat.dev".
platform: leaflet, pckt, offprint, greengale, whitewind, other
tag: click any tag in the results to filter by it
date: today, this week, this month, this year

filters combine with the search query — e.g., searching @zat.dev up returns only zat.dev's posts matching "up".

three modes are available via the toggle below the search box:

keyword (default): SQLite FTS5 full-text search with BM25 ranking + recency boost. fastest (~9ms).
semantic: vector similarity via Voyage AI embeddings + turbopuffer. finds conceptually similar content even without shared words (~345ms).
hybrid: runs both keyword and semantic in parallel, merges via reciprocal rank fusion. best quality, slightly slower (~360ms).

keyword results are ranked by BM25 + recency:

the FTS5 unicode61 tokenizer treats any non-alphanumeric character as a separator. this means: