Search

One search language works everywhere: in Deckard: Find in Notes, and in the search box on search pages, Home, and the Task board.

Find

Run Deckard: Find in Notes, or press Cmd+Shift+Alt+F (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F on Windows and Linux), and type.

• Words search every note section, task, and front-matter-only note. Titles with your words come first, then loose title matches (vcon for Vendor contract), then entries that mention them. The last word matches as you type it.
• Query terms such as #tags, @people, is:open, or in:notes/work narrow results as in the query language. A word also offers tags by their last part (atlas offers #project/atlas) and conditions by value (overd offers is:overdue); Tab or a tag’s + adds it.
• Enter opens the note or task at its line (in the editor, or on the note page when deckard.openNotesIn says page), a tag’s page, or a saved search. Shift+Enter opens a note or task the other way. Show all results, or the title bar’s list button, opens a search page.
• With no full match, Find shows partial matches, and a misspelled word gets Search for … instead.
• With nothing typed, Find lists pinned notes, the five last opened notes, five recent searches (with Save search), saved searches, and favorite and recent tags.
• Cmd+Enter, or the row’s button, opens a result to the side and keeps Find open. Alt+Enter inserts a link at the cursor (for a task, to its heading). Cmd+. lists every action for the row with its key: open, link, copy a link, pin; complete, reopen, date, or edit a task; favorite or rename a tag; save or forget a recent search. Use Ctrl for Cmd on Windows and Linux.
• Task rows have Complete (or Reopen), which redraws in place with Undo, and Set due: Today, Tomorrow, Next Monday, a date, or none.
• Answer. In a workspace with types, words that name a row and a field, such as checkout lead or who is on payments, list up to three answers first, each with the path that reached it; see Asking Find.
• A term. A defined term typed alone, such as NDF, or asked about, what is NDF, lists its definition first, with where it was defined, which Enter opens.
• Create note, with the words beside it, appears for words that read as a name no note has.
• Ask it in today’s note comes first when nothing has every word and you typed only words, tags, and people, with the line it writes under it: - [?] and your words, as a question, under today’s note’s Questions heading, or after its last list when it has none. When some notes have some of the words, it follows the line saying so, above them; when what you typed is a day, it is not offered, and Enter opens that day’s note. When you have searched for the same words before and left Find without opening anything, it says how often, and since when: You have searched for this 3 times since Fri, Oct 2.
• Open questions whose words hold every word you typed are listed with a ?; Enter opens the line.
• Add to today’s note, with the line it writes under it, appears when nothing has every word and you typed only words, tags, and people. With Ask it and Create note, it comes first when nothing has any of the words, and after the results when some notes have some of them. It reads the line as Add Task’s quick add does: Call Ren friday p2 becomes - [ ] Call Ren ⏫ 📅 2026-10-02.
• A day such as friday, oct 3, or last friday offers that day’s note, creating it if needed. A short weekday alone, such as fri, is a word.
• Opened with words selected on one line, Find starts with them as its search.

Ties go to what you open most and most recently: a note counts once per heading the cursor is in, at most every ten minutes, however it was opened. Find also ranks higher a result you chose before for the same text, never above an exact title. This is kept in VS Code’s preferences, never in your notes.

The search box

Search pages, Home’s search widget, and the Task board (tasks only) share one search box. Press / to type in it, and Enter or the → at its end to run the search. The × beside it clears the search, and shows only when there is something to clear: on a tag’s page, more than the tag. Builder is joined to the start of the box.

• Each term is a chip with a ×, joined by AND or OR; words show as their text ~ condition. Parenthesized groups nest as frames with their own ×. Tags are blue; terms negated with NOT or - are red.
• Typed words narrow all results, not only the visible page. Enter makes them chips and remembers the search; otherwise they are dropped when the box loses focus.
• Completions offer field names, values, tags, conditions, and, in an empty box, recent searches. After type = team they offer the type’s fields, then their values. After [[ they offer notes, most linked first. Nothing is preselected: Enter runs what you typed, Tab completes, Escape abandons the edit.
• Pressing a chip removes its term. Backspace in an empty field removes the last chip.
• Two tags side by side are joined with AND.
• A parse error shows under the box; the results keep the last search that ran.
• When nothing matches, Nothing matched. Search for … instead? corrects misspelled words, never tags or folders.
• Save search…, in a search page’s or the Task board’s ⋯, stores the search by name. Saved searches appear on Home and the Tags tab and survive tag renames.

Builder opens under the box, and stays pressed while it is open. It edits the same search as nested rows and groups. Each group matches all of or any of its rows, and not negates a group.

• Add condition: type a tag, word, or value such as open, then choose a completion or press Enter; the row fills in its field and operator.
• Enter opens the next row, Backspace in an empty row removes it, and Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on macOS) adds a group joined the other way.
• The Status field lists the workspace’s task statuses.
• After a type = row, the field list offers the type’s fields under its name, then Through each relation, then Built in.
• Operators are =, !=, ~, !~, >, >=, <, <=. NOT tag = #a opens as tag != #a; negated groups are written as NOT (…).

Refine

Refine, under the search box, counts what the results could be narrowed by: open, done, and cancelled tasks, each open status found (such as In progress, Blocked, Waiting, or Unknown), due dates (overdue, next seven days, later, none), tags, Links to (up to eight notes), last update, creation month, and folders. Values that keep all or none of the results are hidden.

• Select a value to add it with AND.
• Alt-select to add it with AND NOT.
• Shift-select to add it with OR to the value before it, such as open or done tasks.
• Enter, Alt+Enter, and Shift+Enter do the same from the keyboard. Hover a value to see what each writes.

Refine’s values fold under its heading: select Refine to fold or unfold them. It starts unfolded, or folded with Zen on, and stays as you leave it while you search. While the search holds values Refine offers, the heading says how many, such as Refine · 2 set. The count of results and a tag page’s lines about its other spellings and untagged mentions are never folded.

On a type’s rows, Refine also offers each select field’s options, counted over the rows.

Refine writes ordinary query text, so the result can be saved, copied into a query block, or edited in the builder. A search of one tag, or tags joined by AND, lists related Tags instead, each with a three-step rail for its share of results (in 6 of 13 results). While the Context sidebar is open, Refine is shown there, and the page draws none of its own. A tag page’s lines about its other spellings and untagged mentions stay under the search box, as do Drop and Clear when a search matched nothing.

Query language

A Deckard query is what you type into Find, the search box, a query block, or an AI assistant:

(tag = #project/atlas AND tag = @ren-kade) OR (tag = #risk/vendor AND text ~ "elevator")

Terms combine with AND, OR, NOT, and parentheses. AND binds tighter than OR, adjacent terms are joined by an implicit AND, and - or ! before a term negates it. A bare #tag or @person is a tag condition, a bare [[Note]] a link condition, and a bare or quoted word a text condition, so #project/atlas "vendor risk" is a complete query.

Shorthands, written the way GitHub writes them:

Put - before a shorthand to negate it, as in -is:done. Deckard keeps a shorthand as written when it saves or formats a query.

is:blocked and is:blocking read ⛔ and 🆔 markers between two open tasks: a task is blocked while a task its ⛔ names is open, and blocking while an open task names its 🆔. Completing the blocker frees both, and a ⛔ naming nothing in the workspace blocks nothing. An open task with the Blocked status is blocked too, whatever its ⛔ markers say. has:dependsOn and has:id read the markers whatever state the tasks are in.

Fields:

Links. A link belongs to the entry whose lines hold it: the task on its line, the tagged line, or else the heading it is under (not that heading’s parents). A link in front matter or above the first heading belongs to the note itself. Links count as in Linked from: front matter included, code blocks excluded, and self-links excluded unless they name a heading. A link to a note that does not exist yet still counts, so [[Q4 offsite]] finds everything waiting on it.

Weeks and months cover the whole span: due = this-week is any day this week, due < next-week is before next week starts, and created >= last-month is from the 1st of last month on. Weeks start on deckard.calendar.weekStart, Sunday by default. friday is the next one for due, scheduled, and start, and the last one for created, updated, and done. Values are read when the search runs, so a saved this-week moves with the week. Numeric dates such as 10/3 are not read.

Created and updated. A note’s created date is its created: or date: front matter; otherwise a daily note’s day (or its file’s age, if older), or the file’s creation time. Its updated date is its updated: front matter, or the file’s modified time.

Operators: = is, != is not, ~ contains, !~ does not contain, and >, >=, <, <= for dates and priorities. A window such as 7d compares by its far end: updated > 7d means within the last seven days, and due < 7d means due within the next seven, overdue included. : reads as = for every field but text (tag:#atlas), where it matches a substring as ~ does (text:plan finds “planning”); Deckard writes = or ~ when formatting. A comparison can follow it: updated:>2026-01-01 equals updated > 2026-01-01. Every operator has an opposite, so any one condition can be negated without NOT; use NOT to negate a parenthesized group.

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