Search

Sourcipedia's search looks for entries by topic name first, then by the words in their summaries. It works best with the name of a topic. When nothing matches, it offers a provisional answer built from related entries and adds the topic to the research queue.

01How it works

Search runs four steps in order and stops at the first one that finds something:

1. Exact topic name. Your query matches the name of a concept, or one of its other names. You get the entries tagged with that concept.
2. Close topic name. Your query is close to a concept's name, allowing for typos and small differences. A misspelled quamtum entanglement can still find Quantum Entanglement.
3. Close entry title. Your query is compared with entry titles and with the research questions the entries were written from.
4. Words in summaries. Entries whose summaries contain words from your query, ranked by how often those words appear. Results from this step and the one before are merged into one list.

Search matches spelling and words, not meaning. A synonym or a paraphrase won't find an entry unless it shares words with it. The title and word steps also only look through the more recent entries, so they can miss an older one. An exact topic-name search doesn't have that limit.

The match label

The line under your query shows the number of results and which step found them:

02What to type

Names work best

Type the name of a subject, person, place, event or term: photosynthesis, Cassini-Huygens, grid-scale battery storage. Names have the best chance of matching a topic directly.

Questions match loosely

You can type a full question, but it will match loosely. Only the first few words are used for word matching, and common words such as "what" and "is" appear in most summaries. Instead of what is the difference between mass and weight, try mass and weight, or search each term on its own.

Typos and punctuation

Small spelling mistakes in a topic name are fine. Capital letters and punctuation are ignored. There are no search operators: quotes, minus signs and similar syntax have no special meaning.

03Reading the results

Results appear at /search?q=…: up to ten entries, best match first. Each result shows:

• The entry's title.
• The start of its summary.
• Up to four concept tags.
• The websites of up to six of its sources, each linking to the source, and a count of any more.
• A quality score, marked Q, on entries that have one.

Click a result to open the entry. There is no second page of results. If what you want isn't there, make the query more specific.

Suggestions as you type

The search box on the home page and on the search page shows up to six matching entries as you type. Use the arrow keys to move through them and Enter to open one. Press Enter without choosing one to see the full results, or Escape to close the list.

04When nothing matches

If none of the four steps finds anything, Sourcipedia tries to write a provisional card from topics it already has. It picks the closest concepts, pulls claims from their entries, removes repeats, and a model writes a short summary from those claims.

The card is marked "Synthesized from related topics" and shows:

• A provisional confidence between 0 and 1. It is discounted because the topic wasn't researched directly.
• The concepts it is based on, with each one's share.
• Key points, and up to six supporting claims. Claims the sources disagree on are marked Contested.
• The websites of its sources, each linking to the source.

A provisional card is only shown in search. It isn't saved as an entry. If there isn't enough related material to write one, you see a short note instead, with any related topics that do exist.

Your topic joins the queue

Every search that reaches this point adds the topic to the research queue, ahead of routine topics. Topics that look like typos, noise or injected instructions are turned away. When the full entry is written, it appears on /recent and in search.

The "Request full research on this topic" button records that you want the topic. It adds to a count Sourcipedia uses to see which missing topics readers want most. The topic is already queued, so the button doesn't start a separate run.

05Limits

06Accounts and privacy

Search needs no account, and the public site has no sign-up. When a search finds nothing, Sourcipedia records the query text and how often it has been asked, to decide what to research next. That record isn't linked to you, your IP address or a session.

Writing a provisional card sends the query text to an AI model provider. Researching the topic also sends it to web search and scholarly database providers. The Privacy Policy has the details.

07Where to go next

• Look something up now → sourcipedia.com
• Understand what a result opens into → Articles & sources
• Run a long-form report on your own question → ResearchAnything quickstart