| name | search-corpus |
| description | Answers "what have I already thought about X?" by searching the substacker corpus (seeds, drafts, published) for seeds matching a topic, keyword, analogy, or author. Returns a ranked list of seeds with id, title, status, density score, and a one-line excerpt. Use when another agent (Intuition Builder, Editor) needs prior thinking before generating new material, or when the writer asks "have I written about X." Trigger keywords — search, find, what have I, already thought, prior work, precedent, have I written about. |
Search Corpus
Table of Contents
Related skills: Called by intuition-builder (before generating framings), editor (before reviewing a draft to surface prior thinking), writer directly. Read-only — no writes.
Workflow
Search corpus for query:
- [ ] Step 1: Parse query → topic tag, keyword, analogy term, or author
- [ ] Step 2: Grep corpus/{seeds,drafts,published}/**/*.md
- [ ] Step 3: Rank matches by signal
- [ ] Step 4: Format top 10 as a ranked list with id, status, density, excerpt
Query forms
The skill accepts three query shapes:
- Topic tag (e.g.,
dropout): grep frontmatter topics: for the tag; fallback to body keyword.
- Freeform keyword (e.g.,
kv cache): grep body + title for the phrase.
- Structured (e.g.,
{topics: [attention-mechanism], status: published}): direct filter.
Ranking
Rank by:
- Exact tag match > freeform body match.
- Density score descending.
- Recency (created date descending).
- Status priority:
published > draft > seed > dead.
Exclude corpus/dead/ always unless query includes include_dead: true.
Output format
Top 10 matches, one per line:
N. {id} | {status} | density={score} | "{first-sentence excerpt, ≤120 chars}"
If >10 results, show 10 and append: ... N more matches — narrow the query.
If 0 results: No matches. Candidate related searches: {suggest 2-3 alternate topic tags}.
Worked example
Query: dropout
Matches:
1. 2026-04-21-dropout-as-ensemble-thinned-networks | seed | density=7 | "had a thought while running — dropout is secretly an ensemble method."
2. 2026-02-08-bagging-in-deep-nets | draft | density=6 | "bagging is the thing dropout is trying to be."
3. 2025-11-14-noise-as-regularization | published | density=5 | "adding noise at training time prevents the model from memorizing."
Query: KV cache (freeform)
Matches:
No matches. Candidate related searches: attention-mechanism, inference, context-engineering
Guardrails
- Read-only. Never mutates seeds.
- Never returns seeds from
corpus/dead/ unless query explicitly opts in.
- Excerpt is verbatim from body — never a summary.
- If >10 matches, truncate and tell the caller.
- If 0 matches, suggest related searches; do not invent matches.
- Respect
manual_edits: true — do not reveal private-looking content beyond first-sentence excerpt without caller explicitly requesting full seed read.
Quick reference
- Input: query string or structured filter.
- Output: top-10 ranked matches with id, status, density, excerpt.
- Read-only, no side effects.
