# Search Design And Indexing

> Design search experiences and indexing strategies (full-text, filters, relevance, ranking). Use when adding search features, choosing search technology, or improving search quality.

- Skill: `itsual/search-design-and-indexing` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add itsual/search-design-and-indexing`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/itsual/search-design-and-indexing/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: itsual (https://skillmd.com/u/itsual)
- Updated: 2026-09-21
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/itsual/search-design-and-indexing

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# Search Design and Indexing

## Overview

Search is a product feature as much as a technical one. Relevance, latency, and freshness all matter.

## When to Use

- Adding or redesigning search
- Choosing between database LIKE/full-text, dedicated search engines, or vector search
- Improving relevance or performance of existing search

## Key Decisions

- What needs to be searchable (fields, entities, permissions)?
- Indexing strategy and freshness requirements
- Ranking / relevance signals
- Filtering, faceting, and sorting needs
- Handling of permissions and multi-tenant isolation in results
- Typo tolerance, stemming, language support

## Principles

- Start with the user task, not the technology
- Measure search quality (relevance, zero-result rate, latency)
- Keep indexing pipelines observable and recoverable

## Verification

- Common user queries return relevant results
- Permissions are enforced on search results
- Indexing lag and failures are visible