By name: zift description: Fast, semantic, and hybrid code search tool. Use when you need to find specific code patterns, understand architectural flows, or locate symbols across a large codebase using natural language, exact strings, or regular expressions.
zift Skill
zift is a high-performance, local-first code search tool that combines semantic (vector) and lexical (FTS5) search.
Core Search Modes
1. Semantic / Hybrid (Default)
Uses natural language to find code by "meaning" or "intent".
zift "how do I handle database connections" .
Best for: High-level architectural questions, finding unfamiliar logic.
2. Exact Match (-e, --exact)
Performs a literal, byte-perfect substring search.
zift -e "SearchResult { file_path" .
Best for: Finding specific variable names, error strings, or boilerplate.
3. Regex Search (-r, --regex)
Uses Rust-powered regular expressions for pattern matching.
zift -r "pub (async )?fn" .
Best for: Finding all instances of a pattern (e.g., all public functions).
Workflow
Indexing
Before searching, you must index the project. zift uses incremental indexing and will auto-refresh stale files on query, but a full initial index is recommended:
zift add .
Filtering
Use the -l or --local flag to restrict results to the current working directory (useful in monorepos).
zift "auth logic" . --local
Architecture & Performance
- Local-first: All embeddings and indices stay on your machine (
~/.cache/zift). - GPU Accelerated: Uses Metal/GPU for embedding generation via
llama-cpp-2. - Hybrid RRF: Fuses semantic and lexical results using Reciprocal Rank Fusion (k=60) with Power-Law scaling (γ=2.5) for intuitive percentages.
- Speed: Exact and Regex searches skip the embedding phase and are near-instant (<50ms).
Troubleshooting
- Stale Index: If results seem old, run
zift add .again orzift forget .to reset. - Model Issues:
ziftdefaults tonomic-embed-text-v1.5. Ensure the model is downloaded to the cache directory.