jev find

Pick the candidate that best answers a plain-language query, and say whether any candidate answers it at all. No index, no embeddings.

jev find <query> (--files <paths...> | --candidates <ref> | --lines <ref>) [options]

When to use

"Which file covers X", "which note mentions Y", "which line of the terms answers Z". Use it when the query is a concept rather than an identifier you could grep. For ordering and filtering a whole result list, use rerank instead.

Options

Option	Meaning	Default
<query>	What you are looking for	required
-f, --files <paths...>	Each file is a candidate; its id is the path
-c, --candidates <ref>	JSON: ["text"], [{"id","text"}], or {"id": "text"}
-l, --lines <ref>	Each non-empty line of a file or stdin is a candidate with id L<line number> (1-based, counted in the source file, blank lines included)
-k, --top-k <n>	How many ranked results to show	5
--found <p>	Exists probability at or above which the verdict is answered	0.7
--absent <p>	Exists probability below which the verdict is absent; between is partial	0.35
--fail-on <list>	Exit 2 when the exists verdict is absent or partial	none

Limits: 250 candidates per call; each text is truncated at 2,000 characters.

Output

top[] with id, probability, text; exists and exists_verdict (answered, partial, absent).

Ranking always produces a winner because the probabilities sum to 1. Check exists_verdict before trusting top[0].

Example

jev find "how do I rotate API keys" --files docs/*.md -k 2

answered  (exists 0.99)  how do I rotate API keys

#  Prob  Id               Text
-  ----  ---------------  ------------------------------------------------------------
1  0.99  docs/auth.md     To rotate an API key: create a new key in Settings > Keys, …
2  0.01  docs/billing.md  Invoices are issued monthly and can be downloaded as PDF.

Pattern: semantic find cookbook.