# Search your records > Search an index by meaning and by words, narrow it with filters, read why each record matched, and search from cherry or a connected assistant. Anyone who can ask questions in your workspace can search an index: owners, admins, members and viewers. You do it on **Intelligence · Vector search**, by asking cherry, or from an AI assistant you have connected. ## Search in the console :::steps 1. **Open Vector search.** In the console, go to **Intelligence · Vector search** and choose an index from the list. On a phone the list is a menu called **Search index**. 2. **Describe what you want.** Type in the box under **What are you looking for?**. A phrase or a sentence works better than a single word, because sanda search matches meaning as well as words. An exact reference such as an invoice number works too. 3. **Set how many results.** **Results** offers 5, 10, 25 or 50. 4. **Narrow it, if you want.** Press **Filters**. See below. 5. **Press Search.** Results appear under the box. ::: Search is unavailable while an index has nothing in it yet ("Your first records are being prepared") or while sanda search is switched off and the index is paused. A query can be up to 1,000 characters. ## Narrow with filters **Filters** opens **Narrow the search**. A condition is a filter column, a comparison and a value. **All conditions must match**, and you can add up to eight with **+ Add condition**. **Clear filters** removes them all. ![The search box with the Filters panel open, showing one condition on the customer column.](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/media/use-search-filters.png "One filter condition. Every condition must match.") The filter columns are the ones you chose when you created the index. If it has none, the panel says so. What you can compare depends on the column's type: | Column holds | Comparisons | |---|---| | Text | **is**, **is not**, **contains** | | A number, or a date and time | **is**, **is not**, **greater than**, **at least**, **less than**, **at most** | | True or false | **is**, **is not**, with **True** or **False** to choose | For text, **is** matches the whole value exactly, including its capitals, and **contains** matches part of it whatever the capitals. Dates and times are entered in your own time zone. Every condition needs a value before you can search. See [filters and date ranges](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/reference/filters) for how filters and conditions work across sanda. ## Read the results ![Two search results, each with the record key, how it matched, an excerpt with the matching words highlighted, and its filter values.](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/media/use-search-results.png "Results for a search by meaning and words.") Each result shows: - **The key.** The value of the key column, which identifies the row. - **How it matched.** **meaning + words**, **meaning**, **words**, or **substring** for the rare search that is only stop words or punctuation. - **An excerpt** of the matching text, with your words highlighted. Highlights show words only, so a row that matched by meaning may have none. - **Filter values**, up to four, and the source table. The list is ranked by meaning and word matching combined. sanda does not show a score, because the order tells you which row ranked higher and not how confident the search is. The label on each row is the honest signal. A row that matched on **meaning** only, for a question whose words are in your data, is a hint that the words matched nothing. The heading says **Hybrid search** when both searches ran, and **Words only** when the search by meaning could not, for example because the daily AI limit has been reached. It then tells you why. If no row contained your words, sanda says so: "No records matched your exact words. These are the nearest results by meaning; they may not all be relevant." A search always returns the nearest rows, even where nothing is a good match, so read them before you act on them. Press a result to open **Record** with the full indexed text, its fields, and **Copy record ID**. If a long text was split into pieces, the result shows the piece that matched best, and the detail says which one. **Recent in this session** lists your last five searches on the empty page so you can run one again. ## Search from cherry Ask about wording and cherry searches for you: - "Which invoices mention water damage?" - "Find the tickets that sound like this one." - "What do the notes say about the Ferndale site?" cherry has the search when your workspace has an index with rows in it and your edition includes sanda search. It can use an index's filter columns to narrow a search, and it reads back the key, the filter values and the start of each row's text. Search finds rows and never produces a number. When you ask "how many" or "how much", cherry takes the keys from the hits and runs a query with a condition on those keys, so the total comes from your definitions. See [ask questions](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/cherry/ask). cherry cannot create or change an index. That is done in the console. ## Search from a connected assistant An AI assistant connected over MCP can search with the permission to ask questions. Its search takes a query, an optional index name (needed when you have more than one), how many rows to return (10 by default, up to 50) and filters. Its filters can also use `in`, a list of up to 50 values. See [MCP tools](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/mcp/tools) and [MCP permissions](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/mcp/permissions). ## What a search costs Each search turns your words into a vector, so it costs a fraction of your daily AI limit, and your search text is sent to the same outside service as the index text. See [sanda search](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/search#what-leaves-australia). If the daily limit is used up, search still answers from matching words alone. If an owner has switched sanda search off, every index is paused and searching stops until it is switched back on. :::links - [Filters and date ranges](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/reference/filters): Conditions, operators and dates across sanda. - [Build and refresh an index](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/search/build-and-refresh): Keep what you search up to date. - [Ask questions](https://docs.sanda-os.com.au/cherry/ask): Let cherry combine search and queries. :::