tantivy-search

Local code and markdown search tool built on Tantivy. Indexes directories for fast BM25 keyword search across code and markdown files.

Features

• BM25 search with hybrid exact (5x boosted) + fuzzy matching
• Field boosts: title (3x), heading_path (2x), content (1x)
• Language-aware chunking for 30+ programming languages and markdown
• Inline filters: lang:py, repo:myrepo, file:*.toml, after:7d (with negation)
• Snippet mode for compact output, with selective expansion of individual results

Usage

# Index directories (partition name derived from directory basename)
tantivy-index ~/code/my-project ~/Documents/notes

# Search
tantivy-search "error handling lang:py"
tantivy-search "config" --path /home/user/code/my-project
tantivy-search "README lang:md"
tantivy-search "error -lang:python"          # exclude a language
tantivy-search "ssh setup after:7d"          # recent results only

# Path filter: absolute path, repeatable for OR semantics
tantivy-search "config" --path /home/user/code/my-project --path /home/user/Documents/notes

# Browse-then-expand workflow (snippets are the default)
tantivy-search "error handling" -n 10        # 10 compact snippets with indices
tantivy-search "error handling" -n 10 -e 2,5 # expand results 2 and 5 to full content

# Index stats and listing
tantivy-search --status
tantivy-search --list-paths   # tree of indexed filesystem paths with doc counts

Filters

Language aliases: py, md, rb, rs, sh, cs, kt.

Keeping the index up to date

tantivy-index does a full reindex of the given directories each time. For periodic reindexing, a systemd timer works well:

# ~/.config/systemd/user/tantivy-index.service
[Unit]
Description=Reindex tantivy-search

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=%h/.local/bin/tantivy-index %h/code/my-project %h/Documents/notes

# ~/.config/systemd/user/tantivy-index.timer
[Unit]
Description=Reindex every 5 minutes

[Timer]
OnBootSec=30
OnUnitActiveSec=5min

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

For live reindexing (e.g. git-based change detection), see the Python API: SearchIndex.index_repo(repo_path, repo_name).

MCP server

pip install tantivy-search[mcp] adds an optional MCP server. Add to your Claude Desktop / Claude Code config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tantivy-search": {
      "command": "tantivy-search-mcp"
    }
  }
}