Search: find anything in seconds

Three weeks ago you jotted down something about a supplier's pricing. A meeting note? A reading note? Which folder? Once a workspace grows past a few dozen files, remembering where you put things stops working. Consilience's answer is one keystroke.

Press ⌘⇧F (Ctrl+Shift+F on Windows/Linux) and the "Search everything" palette opens. This one Spotlight-style launcher searches your notes, knowledge-graph concepts, open tabs, workspaces, app commands, and settings pages, all at once, on every keystroke. This lesson teaches you to live in it.

One palette for everything

"Search everything" works everywhere: the editor, the graph view, settings, even the welcome screen before you've opened a workspace. Press the shortcut again to close it; so do Esc and a click on the darkened backdrop.

Under the search field sit six scope chips: "All", "Workspaces", "Documents", "Concepts", "Actions", and "Settings". Tab and Shift+Tab cycle through them, so you narrow a crowded result list without the mouse.

• Documents: every note and file, matched on title and text, with the matching words highlighted and a short snippet.
• Concepts: entities the AI pulled into your knowledge graph (people, projects, ideas), each showing how many notes mention it.
• Open tabs: whatever you already have open, with the focused tab tagged "Current".
• Workspaces: the current one plus your recent ones, for quick switching.
• Actions: app commands like "New chat" or "Extract sources", each with its shortcut chip.
• Settings: go straight to a specific page like "Appearance" or "Permissions".

Search everything

The global palette on ⌘⇧F. One dialog for notes, concepts, tabs, workspaces, commands, and settings.

Concept

An entity the AI extracted from your notes into the knowledge graph. Selecting one opens its entity page.

Scope chip

A filter under the search field (All / Workspaces / Documents / Concepts / Actions / Settings) that narrows which sections render.

Match badge

A small tag on each document hit, either "title" or "text", telling you why it matched.

Ask your workspace

The pinned last row that turns your query into a new AI chat, fired with ⌘Enter.

Find bar

The ⌘F companion. It searches only inside the active document, or filters nodes in the graph view.

Reading the results

Results come grouped into labeled sections. After you type a query, the order is Workspaces → Open tabs → Actions → Documents → Concepts → Settings → Ask. Leave the query empty for a resting view: "Recent" (up to six recently opened notes, minus ones already open as tabs), then Workspaces, Open tabs, Actions, and Settings.

↑ / ↓         move (wraps at both ends)
Home / End    jump to first / last row
Tab / ⇧Tab    cycle the six scope chips
↵             open the highlighted row
⌘↵            "Ask your workspace", from anywhere in the list
Esc           close

From search to a conversation

Whenever you've typed a query (and a workspace is open), the last row stays pinned: "Ask your workspace: {query}", subtitled "Answer across your notes in a new chat". Press ⌘Enter from anywhere in the list and a new chat opens with your question pre-filled. If a concept led the results, it comes along as an @-mention and the subtitle reads "New chat with {concept} attached".

The guarantee you already know from chat holds here too: nothing is sent until you press send. The palette only fills in the composer.

That handoff shows up on screen. After a search that walked your knowledge graph, the chat draws an animated mini-graph card titled "Where this came from in your notes". The glowing nodes are the "Directly matched" seeds, your query's direct hits. The matte ones are "Related", reached by walking relations, with each relation's name along the connecting line. Click any node to open its entity page, or press "Open in graph" for the full 3D view.

Commands, cases, and workspaces

The same palette runs commands. Type "terminal", "share", or "new chat", then press Enter. Every action row shows its shortcut chip, so you pick up the faster route each time, and hidden keywords match too: type "pdf" and "Extract sources" surfaces.

Your cases, the long-running investigations you'll build later in the course, get one row each. Searching a case's name is the main way to reopen one.

The shortcuts that matter

Every app-level shortcut can be seen and changed in one place. Settings ▸ "Shortcuts" lists and rebinds them all, and the palette always shows each action's current binding. "Mod" means ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl on Windows/Linux; macOS shows glyphs (⌘⇧G) while other platforms spell it out (Ctrl+Shift+G). The ones worth memorizing:

To rebind one: Settings ▸ "Shortcuts" → click a binding chip (it turns into "Press keys…") → press your combo. Conflicts are refused with 'Already used by "{name}"', and every binding must include ⌘/Ctrl. A per-row reset arrow and "Reset all" restore the defaults. One deliberate default: the sidebar toggle is ⌘\ (Notion-style), because ⌘B is already bold in the markdown editor.

That's the whole habit: one keystroke in, arrows and Enter out. The palette rewards a workspace you never had to organize. The deeper half of that search reads a knowledge graph, and how that graph gets built the moment you save a note is what comes next.