Search

Oxidoc ships a production-grade search engine that runs entirely in the browser via WebAssembly. No server, no external service, no API keys — just build your site and search works.

Lexical Search

BM25 keyword search with fuzzy matching, phrase boost, and section-level results. Zero configuration.

Semantic Search

Understand the meaning of queries with sentence embeddings. Enable with one config line.

Custom Models

Use your own GGUF embedding model for non-English docs or specialized domains.

External Providers

Integrate Algolia, Typesense, Meilisearch, or bring your own search service.

Overview

Feature	Status	Details
Lexical (BM25)	Enabled by default	Zero config, always works
Semantic embeddings	Opt-in	`semantic = true` in config
Hybrid ranking (RRF)	Automatic	When semantic is enabled, fuses both result sets
Fuzzy matching	Built-in	Tolerates typos based on term length
Section-level results	Built-in	Links to the exact heading, not just the page
Lazy chunk loading	Built-in	Only fetches index data matching query terms
Custom models	Supported	Provide your own GGUF sentence embedding model
External providers	Supported	Algolia, Typesense, Meilisearch, or custom JS

How It Works

graph TD
    B[oxidoc build] --> L[BM25 Index]
    B --> S[Embedding Vectors]
    B --> M[Model Copy]
    L --> C[Chunked by term prefix]
    C --> W[Browser / Wasm]
    S --> W
    M --> W
    W --> Q[User Query]
    Q --> LR[Lexical Results]
    Q --> SR[Semantic Results]
    LR --> RRF[Reciprocal Rank Fusion]
    SR --> RRF
    RRF --> R[Ranked Results]

At build time, Oxidoc generates a search index from all your pages. The index is split into small chunks so the browser only downloads what's needed for each query. When semantic search is enabled, pre-computed embedding vectors and the model file are also included in the output.

Quick Start

Search works out of the box. To enable semantic search:

oxidoc.tomltoml

[search]
semantic = true

That's it. See the subpages for deep dives into each feature.

Output Files

When using the built-in provider, oxidoc build generates these search files in dist/:

File	Purpose	Loaded
`search-meta.bin`	Document metadata + chunk manifest	Always (on page load)
`search-chunk-{id}.bin`	Lexical postings for term prefixes	On demand (per query)
`search-vectors.json`	Pre-computed page embeddings	Only if semantic enabled
`search-model.gguf`	Embedding model for query-time inference	Only if semantic enabled