Finding things

Three ways in, and they answer different questions.

You want	Use
A note whose contents mention something	⌘⇧F, the search box
A note whose title or path you half-remember	⌘K → Search Notes…
A command you know exists but not the chord for	⌘K

Searching note contents

⌘⇧F focuses the search box above the note list. / does the same when the list has focus, and <Space>/ from the editor.

Typing filters the list as you go. It searches titles and note bodies, and ranks title matches above body matches.

Several words are ANDed, so rust cli finds notes containing both. The last word is treated as a prefix, so results narrow while you're still typing it.

Punctuation is stripped from your terms rather than interpreted, so a stray quote or asterisk is safe to type, and AND, OR and NEAR are ordinary words here rather than operators.

Tip

Search combines with the folder scope instead of replacing it. Click work/2026 in the sidebar, then search, and you're searching inside that folder.

Press Esc in the list to clear the search. With notes selected, the first Esc clears the selection and the second clears the search.

Scoping to a folder

Click a folder in the sidebar to show only the notes under it. All Notes clears the scope, and so does :cd with no argument.

From the editor, :cd work/2026 scopes and :cd clears.

The command palette

⌘K (or ⌘P) opens the palette. Type to filter, ↵ to run. Every command in the app is in here with its shortcut beside it, which makes it the fastest way to learn chords you don't know yet.

Some rows take an argument instead of running immediately. Selecting one puts you in that mode, with a chip naming it and a placeholder saying what it wants:

Row	Then type
Search Notes	A title or path. ↵ opens the note
New Note	A title, or folder/Title to file it at the same time
Move Note to	A folder
New Folder in	A folder
Open Vault	A recent vault
Open Recent File	A recent file

⌫ on an empty input backs out of a mode and returns you to the command list.

Commands that can't do anything right now are hidden rather than greyed out. The list is fuzzy-ranked, so a disabled row would still consume a ranking slot and ↵ would still land on it.

Why a note might not appear

The vault is still indexing. A large vault takes a moment on first open, and the list fills in as the scan lands.

It isn't a .md file. Halcyon indexes markdown and nothing else.

It's inside a skipped directory. The scan doesn't descend into dot-directories or node_modules, so markdown inside .git/, .obsidian/ or a dependency tree never enters the index. That's what makes pointing Halcyon at a code repository useful rather than overwhelming.

If a note is definitely there, definitely markdown, and still missing, the search index has fallen out of step with the folder. Quitting and reopening rescans it. Failing that, deleting the index forces a rebuild, which costs nothing but the rescan: see Where your files live.