search

This tool covers full-text search, backlinks, SQL reads, asset search, and controlled find-replace operations.

When to read this page: you need to find content across the workspace or query indexed content.

Related pages:

• Permissions
• Error Types

Common Actions

Group	Actions
Text search	fulltext, search_refs
Graph / relation	get_backlinks, list_invalid_refs
SQL / asset	query_sql, search_assets, fulltext_asset_content
Mutating	find_replace

Safety Rules

• find_replace is the mutating exception in this tool and requires explicit confirmation.
• query_sql is read-only and only accepts SELECT statements; add LIMIT yourself.
• Search results are filtered by notebook permissions where applicable.
• Full-text search can lag briefly behind recent writes because indexing is eventually consistent.

Examples

MCP:

{
  "action": "fulltext",
  "query": "meeting notes",
  "methodName": "keyword",
  "sortBy": "relevance"
}

{
  "action": "query_sql",
  "sql": "SELECT id, content, type FROM blocks LIMIT 10"
}

CLI:

siyuan search fulltext --query "meeting notes" --method-name keyword --sort-by relevance
siyuan search query-sql --sql "SELECT id, content, type FROM blocks LIMIT 10"

Notes for AI callers:

• Prefer semantic aliases such as methodName, sortBy, query, and sql over numeric method / orderBy or short legacy fields like k.
• fulltext returns plainContent and excerpt by default, so you do not need stripHtml=true just to get plain text.
• When parentId, hasTags, or permission filtering are involved, kernel* metadata describes the raw SiYuan search page and returned* metadata describes the post-filtered data in the current response.

Action List

• fulltext
• query_sql
• get_backlinks
• search_refs
• find_replace
• search_assets
• fulltext_asset_content
• list_invalid_refs