Command documentation

search

Find text, lexical data, resources, entities, and optional precomputed semantic neighbors.

Purpose

This command is available over HTTP, MCP and the local CLI. HTTP responses use the compact public response shape with summaries, warnings and bounded tables.

MCP connection

Use endpoint https://bible.grod.es/mcp with tool bible_search. The MCP Server Card is /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json.

Parameters

Name	Required	Description
`query`	yes	Free-text discovery query. It finds candidates; inspect or audit the returned rows before treating a hit as evidence.
`limit`	no	Maximum candidate rows per requested search group. Full-text groups are ranked by BM25; other groups use stable source/reference ordering, so this is a bounded discovery window rather than a promise that every group is globally relevance-ranked. Default 20, max 100.
`domain`	no	Optional search domain filter, such as text, lexical, resources, entities, topics, sources, or semantic. It narrows discovery groups.
`kinds`	no	Search result groups to run, such as refs, lexicon, resources, entities, topics, sources, morphology, variants, or semantic. Each group receives its own bounded results.
`scope`	no	Search boundary applied before candidate ranking. Scope narrows where the command searches or audits; target is what the command is about. Scope grammar: named corpus slice, natural Bible reference, or prefix:value. Examples: corpus, Torah, Pauline epistles, Acts, ref:John 7:53-8:11, source:LXX, topic:covenant.
`resource_type`	no	Resource type filter for resource/search/notable/source inventory rows, such as commentary, dictionary, article, dataset, or media.
`include_semantic`	no	Include precomputed semantic-neighbor discovery where available. It is useful for exploration, but semantic similarity is not primary textual evidence.
`query_vector`	no	External precomputed semantic query vector with exactly 384 dimensions. The API does not generate embeddings; pass this only when your client already has a compatible vector.
`query_vector_id`	no	Traceability identifier for query_vector, such as the embedding model/version or client-side vector cache key.

Required option sets: [["query"]]

Examples

HTTP

curl -s 'https://bible.grod.es/api/search?include_semantic=true&kinds=refs&kinds=lexicon&kinds=resources&query=covenant'

MCP

{
  "arguments": {
    "include_semantic": true,
    "kinds": [
      "refs",
      "lexicon",
      "resources"
    ],
    "query": "covenant"
  },
  "name": "bible_search"
}

CLI

bible search --kinds refs,lexicon,resources --include-semantic covenant

Caveats for this command

Semantic options use precomputed local vectors when available. They are discovery aids, not primary textual evidence.
DSS material is fragmentary.
LXX GreekResources data is lemma-level and not a full critical apparatus.
The runtime does not call LLM or embedding APIs.