Lean Search
felixleopold53 downloadsSearch your vault quickly with precise matching and frecency ranking that favors recently and frequently opened notes.
- Overview
- Scorecard
- Updates1
A fast, lean search for Obsidian that always surfaces the note you want — built around precise matching and heavy frecency, like zoxide for your vault.
It started as a rethink of Omnisearch: a familiar search modal with a smaller memory footprint, incremental background indexing, and ranking that strongly favors the notes you actually use.
Why it's different
| Problem in the old approach | What Lean Search does |
|---|---|
| Kept two full copies of every note's text in RAM | Keeps only lightweight metadata + one inverted index; excerpts are read on demand |
| Serialized a fragile index into IndexedDB | A versioned plugin-local cache with validation, atomic replacement, and safe rebuild fallback |
| Re-indexed everything up front (freezes on big vaults) | Restores the previous index first, then refreshes only changed notes in the background |
| Recency used file modification time, weakly, and was off by default | Frecency: open-count × recency, tracked from file-open — recently/often opened notes win |
| Heading matches buried under body-text term-frequency | Explicit title/heading substring bonuses — heading hits reliably rise to the top |
How ranking works (zoxide model)
Each result's final score is base × field × recency × edit:
- base (match) — MiniSearch relevance. Terms are AND-combined with prefix matching; fuzzy is off by default for predictability.
- field — exact title match, title/heading/alias substring hits get strong multipliers.
- recency (open-frecency) —
1 + recencyWeight × ln(1 + frecency), wherefrecency = open_count × recency_bucket(4× within an hour, 2× within a day, 0.5× within a week, else 0.25×). - edit — an optional, gentle boost for files you modified recently (
1 + modifiedRecencyWeight × bucket), independent of how often you open them.
The result: type a fragment of a note you opened recently and it jumps to #1. Leave the box empty and you get your most-frecent notes instantly, like zoxide with no argument.
Tune Recency weight and Recently edited boost in settings (both 0 = off). Turn on Debug scoring to see the full match × field × recency × edit = final breakdown under each result.
Query syntax
| You type | Meaning |
|---|---|
foo bar |
both terms must match |
"foo bar" |
exact phrase |
#project |
must be tagged #project |
-draft |
must not contain draft |
Keyboard
↑↓ navigate · Enter open · Ctrl/⌘ Enter open in new pane · Ctrl/⌘ ⌥ Enter new split ·
⌥ Enter insert link · Tab search within the selected note · ⌥ ↑↓ query history · Ctrl/⌘ O open in background · Esc close.
Build & install
npm install
npm run build # outputs dist/main.js
npm test # runs the frecency + query smoke test
Copy dist/main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into
<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/lean-search/, then enable Lean Search in
Community Plugins. For development, npm run dev rebuilds on change.
One-command install into your vault(s)
scripts/install.sh builds and copies the plugin into every vault listed in
VAULT_PLUGIN_DIRS. The convenience wrapper install-plugin.sh (machine-local,
gitignored) hardcodes your vault paths:
./install-plugin.sh # build locally and install
npm run vault-install # same thing
scripts/release.sh (via npm run release -- <version>) bumps versions, builds,
commits, and tags a release.
Settings highlights
- Recency weight, Recently edited boost, and Show recent notes on empty query — the frecency behavior.
- Index note body text — turn off for the absolute leanest setup (titles/headings/tags only).
- Persistent search index — restored across Obsidian restarts, then reconciled lazily from file modification times.
- Fuzziness — keep on Exact + prefix for the most predictable results.
- Field weights — tune how much titles, headings, tags, etc. count.
- Show image preview — thumbnail of each result's first image (or frontmatter
cover/banner/image). Reuses content already loaded for the visible results, so it doesn't slow search; recents stay instant. - Debug scoring — show the
match × field × recency × edit = finalbreakdown (and matched terms) under each result, for tuning.
License
Apache 2.0 © Felix Leopold.