Search Strategy

If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md.

The core intelligence behind enterprise search. Transforms a single natural language question into parallel, source-specific searches and produces ranked, deduplicated results.

The Goal

Turn this:

"What did we decide about the API migration timeline?"

Into targeted searches across every connected source:

~~chat:  "API migration timeline decision" (semantic) + "API migration" in:#engineering after:2025-01-01
~~knowledge base: semantic search "API migration timeline decision"
~~project tracker:  text search "API migration" in relevant workspace

Then synthesize the results into a single coherent answer.

Query Decomposition

Step 1: Identify Query Type

Classify the user's question to determine search strategy:

Step 2: Extract Search Components

From the query, extract:

• Keywords: Core terms that must appear in results
• Entities: People, projects, teams, tools (use memory system if available)
• Intent signals: Decision words, status words, temporal markers
• Constraints: Time ranges, source hints, author filters
• Negations: Things to exclude

Step 3: Generate Sub-Queries Per Source

For each available source, create one or more targeted queries:

Prefer semantic search for:

• Conceptual questions ("What do we think about...")
• Questions where exact keywords are unknown
• Exploratory queries

Prefer keyword search for:

• Known terms, project names, acronyms
• Exact phrases the user quoted
• Filter-heavy queries (from:, in:, after:)

Generate multiple query variants when the topic might be referred to differently:

User: "Kubernetes setup"
Queries: "Kubernetes", "k8s", "cluster", "container orchestration"

Source-Specific Query Translation

~~chat

Semantic search (natural language questions):

query: "What is the status of project aurora?"

Keyword search:

query: "project aurora status update"
query: "aurora in:#engineering after:2025-01-15"
query: "from:<@UserID> aurora"

Filter mapping:

~~knowledge base (Wiki)

Semantic search — Use for conceptual queries:

descriptive_query: "API migration timeline and decision rationale"

Keyword search — Use for exact terms:

query: "API migration"
query: "\"API migration timeline\""  (exact phrase)

~~project tracker

Task search:

text: "API migration"
workspace: [workspace_id]
completed: false  (for status queries)
assignee_any: "me"  (for "my tasks" queries)

Filter mapping:

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