/book-search

Search the vault's indexed book and PDF content using BM25 relevance ranking. Returns ranked results from architecture books without reading full files.

Usage

/book-search <topic>
/book-search "event driven"
/book-search microservices
/book-search clean architecture

Instructions

When the user invokes /book-search <query> or asks "which books discuss X" or "what do my books say about X":

Phase 1: Search the Graph Index

Run the graph search filtered to book content:

node scripts/graph-query.js --search "<query>"

Phase 2: Filter to Books Only

From the results, include ONLY entries where:

• Type is PDF (indexed PDF books)
• Type is Page with source field containing .pdf or tags containing pdf-import or type/book

IMPORTANT: Do NOT read the full Page or PDF files. Only use the search results (title, score, path) to present the ranked list.

Phase 3: Present Results

Format as a concise table:

## Books discussing "<query>"

| Score | Book                                                   | Source     |
| ----- | ------------------------------------------------------ | ---------- |
| 11.89 | Clean Architecture (Robert C. Martin)                  | PDF        |
| 8.50  | Building Microservices 2nd Ed (Sam Newman)             | Page + PDF |
| 5.45  | Fundamentals of Software Architecture (Richards, Ford) | PDF        |

_Ranked by BM25 relevance score. Use `/search <query>` for all vault content._

Phase 4: Offer Follow-up (Do NOT Auto-Execute)

After presenting results, offer but do NOT automatically perform:

To dive deeper, I can:
- Read a specific book's Page note for key concepts
- Search for specific passages in the full extracted text
- Find related ADRs or projects that reference these concepts

Wait for the user to explicitly request before reading any files.

Key Rules

1. Never read full book Page notes or PDFs automatically - only present search results
2. Never summarise book content unless the user explicitly asks after seeing results
3. Always use the graph search - never grep through PDF directories
4. Distinguish Page notes from raw PDFs - Page notes have curated summaries, PDFs have keyword indexes only
5. Keep responses concise - this is a lookup tool, not a research tool

How Book Content is Indexed

The graph search index includes:

• Page notes (e.g., Page - Building Microservices 2nd Edition.md) — have title, keywords, tags, and excerpt
• PDF files (e.g., +PDFs/buildingmicroservices2e.pdf) — have extracted keywords and title only

Page notes contain richer metadata and will typically score higher than raw PDFs for the same book.

Examples

/book-search "domain driven design"
/book-search saga
/book-search "API gateway"
/book-search resilience patterns
/book-search "data mesh"
/book-search strangler fig

Related Skills

• /search - Full vault search (all note types)
• /graph-query - Direct graph queries with type/status filters
• /related <topic> - Find all notes mentioning a topic