Use Bun instead of Node.js (bun not node, bun install not npm install).
qmd collection add . --name <n> # Create/index collection
qmd collection list # List all collections with details
qmd collection remove <name> # Remove a collection by name
qmd collection rename <old> <new> # Rename a collection
qmd ls [collection[/path]] # List collections or files in a collection
qmd context add [path] "text" # Add context for path (defaults to current dir)
qmd context list # List all contexts
qmd context check # Check for collections/paths missing context
qmd context rm <path> # Remove context
qmd get <file> # Get document by path or docid (#abc123)
qmd multi-get <pattern> # Get multiple docs by glob or comma-separated list
qmd status # Show index status and collections
qmd update [--pull] # Re-index all collections (--pull: git pull first)
qmd embed # Generate vector embeddings (uses node-llama-cpp)
qmd query <query> # Search with query expansion + reranking (recommended)
qmd search <query> # Full-text keyword search (BM25, no LLM)
qmd vsearch <query> # Vector similarity search (no reranking)
qmd mcp # Start MCP server (stdio transport)
qmd mcp --http [--port N] # Start MCP server (HTTP, default port 8181)
qmd mcp --http --daemon # Start as background daemon
qmd mcp stop # Stop background MCP daemon# List all collections
qmd collection list
# Create a collection with explicit name
qmd collection add ~/Documents/notes --name mynotes --mask '**/*.md'
# Remove a collection
qmd collection remove mynotes
# Rename a collection
qmd collection rename mynotes my-notes
# List all files in a collection
qmd ls mynotes
# List files with a path prefix
qmd ls journals/2025
qmd ls qmd://journals/2025# Add context to current directory (auto-detects collection)
qmd context add "Description of these files"
# Add context to a specific path
qmd context add /subfolder "Description for subfolder"
# Add global context to all collections (system message)
qmd context add / "Always include this context"
# Add context using virtual paths
qmd context add qmd://journals/ "Context for entire journals collection"
qmd context add qmd://journals/2024 "Journal entries from 2024"
# List all contexts
qmd context list
# Check for collections or paths without context
qmd context check
# Remove context
qmd context rm qmd://journals/2024
qmd context rm / # Remove global contextEach document has a unique short ID (docid) - the first 6 characters of its content hash.
Docids are shown in search results as #abc123 and can be used with get and multi-get:
# Search returns docid in results
qmd search "query" --json
# Output: [{"docid": "#abc123", "score": 0.85, "file": "docs/readme.md", ...}]
# Get document by docid
qmd get "#abc123"
qmd get abc123 # Leading # is optional
# Docids also work in multi-get comma-separated lists
qmd multi-get "#abc123, #def456"# Search & retrieval
-c, --collection <name> # Restrict search to a collection (matches pwd suffix)
-n <num> # Number of results
--all # Return all matches
--min-score <num> # Minimum score threshold
--full # Show full document content
--line-numbers # Add line numbers to output
# Multi-get specific
-l <num> # Maximum lines per file
--max-bytes <num> # Skip files larger than this (default 10KB)
# Output formats (search and multi-get)
--json, --csv, --md, --xml, --filesbun src/qmd.ts <command> # Run from source
bun link # Install globally as 'qmd'- SQLite FTS5 for full-text search (BM25)
- sqlite-vec for vector similarity search
- node-llama-cpp for embeddings (embeddinggemma), reranking (qwen3-reranker), and query expansion (Qwen3)
- Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) for combining results
- Token-based chunking: 800 tokens/chunk with 15% overlap
- Never run
qmd collection add,qmd embed, orqmd updateautomatically - Never modify the SQLite database directly
- Write out example commands for the user to run manually
- Index is stored at
~/.cache/qmd/index.sqlite
- Never run
bun build --compile- it overwrites the shell wrapper and breaks sqlite-vec - The
qmdfile is a shell script that runsbun src/qmd.ts- do not replace it