Step 10 — Using Search¶

The fastest way in¶

Everything you have done so far in this tour started from the Graphs Browser and moved through the Types Browser into a set. That path makes sense when you want to explore broadly and are not sure what you are looking for. But when you have something specific in mind, there is a faster route: the search palette.

Press ⌘K on Mac, or Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux. The search palette opens as an overlay on top of whatever you are currently looking at.

What the search palette looks like¶

The palette is a floating panel with a text input at the top and results below. Type "julia" (lowercase is fine — search is case-insensitive).

Results appear almost instantly, grouped into sections:

Entities - Julia Lindström · Professor · Researcher — [Go →]

Browse as set - All entities with label containing "julia" — [Set →]

The Entities section shows individual results — specific things whose name matches your search term. The Browse as set option opens a pre-filtered Set view showing all entities whose label contains the search text, which is useful when many things match and you want to browse rather than jump to one.

Using the results¶

Click Go → next to Julia Lindström.

Moire closes the palette and opens Julia Lindström's entity detail view directly — jumping past the Graphs Browser, Types Browser, and Set view entirely. The context header reads: "Julia Lindström". You can read her full details, follow her relationships, and navigate forward from there.

Click Back to return to wherever you were before opening the palette.

The search palette is fully keyboard-navigable:

↑ / ↓ — move the highlight up and down through the results
Enter — select the highlighted result (opens the entity or the set, depending on which is highlighted)
Escape — close the palette without navigating anywhere

This means a fluent user can open search with ⌘K, type a few characters, arrow down to the right result, and hit Enter — without touching the mouse.

What search is scoped to¶

Search always operates within the currently active graph. If you have multiple graphs loaded and have entered a specific graph, the search results come from that graph only. If you want to search in a different graph, return to the Graphs Browser and enter that graph first.

Search finds entities by their label — the human-readable name that Moire uses to display them. It does not search through descriptions or other text properties, just the primary name. The exception is when you are connected to a pg-ripple endpoint, which unlocks a full-text search mode that searches across all text properties — see the Advanced section for details.

When to use search vs. browsing¶

Neither approach is better than the other — they serve different situations:

Use search when you have a name in mind and want to go there directly.
Use Browse as set from search when you have a partial name or a concept and want to see everything that matches.
Use the Types Browser and facets when you do not have a specific entity in mind and want to explore a category.
Use set traversal when you want to discover what a group connects to, not find a specific thing.

⌘K is always available

The search palette can be opened from any view in Moire — the Set view, the Entity detail view, the Types Browser, the Relationships Browser, anywhere. It is a global shortcut. Keep it in muscle memory for the times when you want to jump straight to something specific.

Tour complete¶

You have now seen every major feature of Moire. Continue to the Tour Summary for a quick reference table of everything you have covered — or dive straight into the Concepts section if you want to understand the ideas in more depth.