Search Indexer
Builds plain-text lists of file paths under folders you choose, which RobOS text areas search for @-mentions.
Search Indexer keeps lists of paths so that other RobOS apps can offer fast @file suggestions without scanning the disk on each keystroke. For example, the AI Prompt app matches what you type against these lists.
How it works
Each index is a name, a set of folders to scan and a list of excluded folder names. Rebuilding an index walks those folders and writes every path found to ~/.config/robos/search-index/<index-id>.txt, one per line. Names that start with a dot are skipped, as are the excluded names. Search is a case-insensitive substring match on the path. There is no content or symbol indexing and no fuzzy ranking.
Two system indexes are created on first run and cannot be deleted:
| Index | Scans | Excludes |
|---|---|---|
| Source Projects | ~/source | node_modules, .git, dist, .cache, target, __pycache__, .tox |
| RobOS Config | ~/.config/robos | search-index |
Index definitions are stored in ~/.config/robos/search-indexes.json. Other apps can add their own .txt files to the same folder; People Directory writes people.txt there. Apps that read the folder use every .txt file in it, whether or not it is listed in the app.
Use it
- Open RobOS Search Index. The left panel lists the indexes with their file counts.
- Select an index and click Rebuild to scan it, or Rebuild All to scan all of them. The indexes start empty until you do this.
- + Add Index asks for a name and the paths to index, one per line (a leading
~is expanded), and then Create Index. New indexes excludenode_modules,.gitanddist. Delete removes a custom index and its file. - Use Test Search to check what a query returns (up to 30 results).
The indexes are not refreshed automatically, so rebuild after adding many files.
Run it
Launch RobOS Search Index from the app launcher, or run npm start in packages/search-index. Only one window runs at a time.