5 guides
Search and the web
Finding your own notes, and letting the assistant use the web.
Search, the paused notice and the web
The paused-search notice, search with or without a key, and reading a page.
- Search your vault from the Vault pageIn the Beta build, the Vault page has a "Search the vault" box that reads the text of your notes, not just their titles; it ranks by meaning when Ollama can embed your question and by words when it cannot.
- The notice says semantic search is pausedSemantic search uses the nomic-embed-text model through Ollama; when it is missing, or Ollama is not running, indexing pauses and the notice says which, while chat and keyword search keep working.
- Web search with no key: which sites get your search textIn NeuralVault 2.0 the assistant can search the web with no key and no account: the search goes straight from your computer to a few public sites, and the approval card names every one that will receive the text.
- Let the assistant search the webWeb search uses a Brave Search API key, added on the same screen as your model keys but listed separately, because it is not a model provider. *Corrected 2026-10-11: a key is no longer required. With no key the assistant searches a few public sites directly from your computer, and a Brave key you add still takes priority. See the guide on web search with no key.
- How the assistant reads a web pageIn NeuralVault 2.0 the assistant reads a page by fetching it and handing back its main text within a size budget, with a focus option to pick sections and a part option to read on; it always asks first.