Fractal Search for VS Code

Find what you mean, not just what you type.

Built-in VS Code search matches exact text. Fractal Search indexes your workspace at 3 levels — file, section, and line — so related content surfaces even without exact keyword matches.

Why?

Ever searched for "auth middleware" but the code calls it "session validator"? Built-in search returns nothing. Fractal Search finds it because both files share structural patterns with authentication concepts.

Features

• 3-level indexing — file → section → paragraph, each weighted by relevance
• Related term detection — search "database" also finds files about "query", "schema", "migration"
• Smart ranking — direct matches rank highest, related content surfaces naturally
• Filename search — quick search by file/directory names
• Auto-indexing — workspace indexed on open, re-indexes on save
• Zero config — works out of the box with all major languages

Usage

1. Cmd+Shift+P → "Fractal Search: Search Workspace"
2. Type your query
3. Results ranked by multi-level relevance
4. Click to open

Settings

How it works

Documents are indexed at three self-similar scales. Results at each level are weighted with natural decay:

File level       → weight: 1.0    (direct match)
Section level    → weight: 0.618  (contextual match)
Paragraph level  → weight: 0.382  (deep match)
Related terms    → weight: 0.236  (semantic match)

Terms that frequently appear together across your codebase are automatically linked — no configuration needed.

Supported Languages

Works with any text file. Optimized for: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Rust, Java, Markdown, YAML, JSON, HTML, CSS, Shell scripts.

Author

Abhishek Srivastava — github.com/0x-auth

Report issues | Source code