pavilio-search

Gather cited context packs from project notes, decisions, and code via semantic search.

Updated Apr 19, 2026
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/gmotyl/pavilio --skill pavilio-search-gmotyl
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent▼
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: pavilio-search
Source: https://github.com/gmotyl/pavilio/tree/main/skills/pavilio-search
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/gmotyl/pavilio --skill pavilio-search-gmotyl

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

💡 This Skill requires qmd, and includes scripts (resource) components.

What problem does it solve? Project knowledge scatters across notes, memos, progress logs, plans, and decision files, making it hard to assemble everything a project knows about a topic before writing a ticket or plan. This Skill retrieves across all accumulated project documentation and returns a cited context pack instead of an uncited prose answer. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Semantic retrieval with qmd: Refreshes the local qmd index on every run, then queries project collections and widens only the chunks that scored. - Cited context pack output: Emits structured sections — decisions, established facts, open questions and contradictions, code evidence, and sources — each claim tagged with path and date. - Targeted code corroboration: Reads repos.json and greps only the concrete identifiers the notes name, citing file:line rather than scanning source wholesale. - Use Case: Before writing a ticket about authentication changes, run the search to collect every decision, memo, and code reference the project has on auth, with conflicts between sources surfaced side by side. ## Quick Start Ask the agent to run /pavilio-search for your project with a question like "what do we know about the billing migration" to receive a cited context pack.

Frequently Asked Questions about pavilio-search

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I search across all project notes and documentation semantically?▼

Run /pavilio-search with a project name and question. It refreshes the qmd index, queries the project's collection with qmd query, widens scoring chunks with qmd get, and returns a cited context pack with paths and dates.

What is qmd and how does it index project markdown files?▼

qmd is a local semantic search tool that indexes markdown collections and embeds chunks without an API. The qmd-ensure.sh script registers each project directory containing a PROJECT.md as a collection, then runs qmd update and qmd embed incrementally.

Why does qmd update fail with a dead collection error?▼

qmd update crashes when a collection points at a path that no longer exists, abandoning every later collection. Run qmd-ensure.sh with --repoint-dead to point dead collections at projects/archived/<name>, or remove them with qmd collection remove.

Can pavilio-search work without qmd installed?▼

No. If qmd is not on PATH, the skill stops and reports the missing dependency rather than falling back to grep, because a keyword fallback would silently miss semantic matches and present an incomplete result as a full search.

When should I use pavilio-search instead of pavilio-question?▼

Use pavilio-search when you need a cited pack across everything written down — memos, progress, plans, decisions — for downstream work like tickets. pavilio-question only answers quick prose questions from _index.json and PROJECT.md and cannot see memo/, progress/, or plans/.