Searching

The search box at the top of the window searches your whole library. Click it or press Ctrl+K, and start typing: results update as you type, in the Library.

Books and pages

Every search has two tabs:

• Documents: the books, maps and handouts that match, by their title, details, notes or text. An adventure inside an anthology that matches shows with its book's cover and an Adventure ribbon, in place of the book. See Adventures inside a file.
• Inside documents: the pages that match, grouped by book, each with a snippet of the page around your words. Click Open page and the book opens at that page, with your words highlighted. The + on a page adds it to your current binder.

While Bibliotaph is still reading your library, the results say how much is covered, for example "Searching text in 70 of 84 documents."

What you can type

The search guide

When the box is empty, clicking it opens the search guide: every field with what it means and an example. Start typing a field's name and the guide narrows to it; after the colon, it lists that field's values in name order, with how many books have each. Pick one with the mouse, or with the arrow keys and Enter. Ctrl+Space opens the guide at any time, and Esc closes it (press Esc again to clear the search).

Fields

Any field also takes unknown, for books where nobody knows yet: system:unknown finds books still to be sorted out. -isbn:unknown finds the books that print an ISBN. A level filter only matches books whose levels are known, unless you say otherwise.

If something you type can't be understood, the search says what and where, and keeps what you typed.

Search by meaning

about: finds what your books are about, not just the words on their pages. about:"something creepy in a lighthouse" finds pages about dread and haunted lights even when they never say "creepy". Put what you mean in quotes after it, in your own words.

• It ranks rather than filters. Inside documents shows the pages that come closest first, at most three from a book. Documents shows the books whose pages come closest, and those whose title, details, tags, notes and what the AI found in their chapters come closest, best first when the order is Best match. That finds books with no pages to read too, such as a book you own elsewhere.
• Fields and words still narrow it. about:"a heist gone wrong" system:5e level:3 ranks only the 5th-edition books for level 3. A plain word must still be on the page: harbour about:smugglers ranks the pages that say "harbour" by how much they are about smugglers.
• It can't be left out. -about: isn't a search; leave out a word or a field instead, like -theme:horror.
• It needs an embedding model for meaning. With one chosen in Settings > AI, your words are turned into a vector by that model, and pages are found by meaning once they've been read for it. Each book's title, details, tags and notes are read for meaning too, within minutes of choosing the model, even with reading the whole library switched off; books in a folder kept from AI are left out. Pages not read yet, and every page without an embedding model, are found by any of your words instead, and a line over the results says so.

Ask in plain English

The sparkle button beside the search box switches it to Ask. Type what you're after the way you'd say it, for example "Mothership, level 4, jungle world with terraforming", and press Enter. Typing doesn't search while Ask is on; nothing happens until you press Enter.

The AI turns your request into a search, and a panel under the top bar shows what it made of it as chips: each field with its value, which you can change, and the words it kept, each with an × to drop it. Names and exact terms (a villain, a spell) become words a book must have; the rest of what you describe, such as "jungle world with terraforming", becomes an about: chip, so it finds books and pages by meaning rather than asking for every word. When it had to change something, it says what and why, for example "Mothership has no character levels in your library, so level 4 was ignored." Click Search and the chips go into the search box as an ordinary search, which you can then edit like any other.

Ask only uses fields and words you could have typed yourself, and only your own words: it never adds a game system, level or tag you didn't ask for. Click the button again to go back to ordinary searching.

Without AI, Ask still reads your request, by rules instead: it picks out the names in your vocabulary (game systems, types, themes and so on, plurals included), levels ("level 4", "levels 3 to 5", "5th-level"), players ("four players", "a party of 5", "solo"), favorites, PDFs and anything you leave out ("not horror", "without maps"). A phrase in quotes becomes words a book must have, and the rest becomes the about: chip. A note under the chips says it was read without AI. Setting AI up lets Ask read requests more fully. The same happens when the AI is set up but can't answer, for example because its model server is off: the note says what went wrong.

Ask your library a question

In Ask mode you can also ask a question about what's in your books, such as "how does grappling work?" or "which adventures have a lich in a crypt?". Type it and press Ctrl+Enter, or click Answer from my books. Bibliotaph looks through the pages of your books, picks the few that answer it best (no more than three from any one book), and the AI answers from those pages only. This needs AI: without it, Ask says so, with a link to set it up.

• Each claim cites its book and page, like [The Sunken Keep, p. 112]. Click it to open that book at that page, with the quoted words marked. The pages it read are listed under the answer, and each opens its page too.
• It asks the books the Library shows. Filter the Library first (by game system, type, setting, theme and so on, or with fields such as system: and setting: in the search box) to ask only those books. The panel says which filters it used. The words you searched for don't narrow it: the question has its own.
• When your books don't cover it, it says so instead of making something up, and names the pages that came closest.
• Books in a folder kept from AI are never read or sent.

Pages are found by their words, and by their meaning once your library has been read for it (see AI). Until then, books that haven't been read for meaning still take part by their words.

Filters

Filters in the Library's toolbar opens a panel of drop-downs. The four you'll use most come first: Game system, Type, Character level (with Include unknown levels) and Players. More filters opens the rest, in four groups:

• The adventure: Style and Duration, once some book has one.
• About the book: Setting, Themes, Environments, Publisher and Edition, each a box you type in, once some book has one.
• Where it lives: Source folder, Also own and Get it from.
• Housekeeping: Kind (books, images, packs, on this PC, or owned elsewhere), AI (whether a model has read it), Copies (books in more than one file), Adventures inside files (Inside their book, Show as cards or Hide; see Adventures inside a file), Collection (In a collection, or Not in a collection for the books you haven't put in one yet) and Found online: the books each online catalogue found, such as RPGGeek or Open Library, or Not found online for those none found, including books not looked up yet (see Where suggestions come from). It shows once a catalogue has found a book.

Each drop-down lists its choices by name, with how many books each has and Unknown last.

While they're folded away, More filters says how many of them are on, such as "More filters · 1".

The About the book boxes are for fields with too many values for a menu. Start typing, say "marsh" in Environments, and the box lists the values in your library that match, with how many books have each; other names count too, so "5e" finds the 5th edition. Click one, or pick it with the arrow keys and Enter, and it becomes a chip under the box. Several chips in one box find books with any of them: two settings show the books set in either. Boxes work together like the other filters, so a setting and a theme show only the books with both.

The filters that are on show as chips above the results, whether the panel is open or not, and the button counts them: Filters · 2. Click the × on a chip to turn that filter off, or Clear filters beside the chips, once there are several, to turn them all off. A filter and a search work together.

The toolbar also has the order (Best match, Recently added, Recently opened, Title A–Z, Publisher A–Z) and a switch between covers and a list. The order you pick is remembered, even after Bibliotaph closes: one for browsing and one for searching, since Best match only makes sense with a search. A saved search opens in its own order.

Beside them, Packs and Each file choose how packs show. Packs, the usual way, gives each map or image pack one card. Each file gives every image and PDF inside a pack a card of its own, so you can browse a pack's maps among everything else or search for one handout by its name. A file's card says which pack it's in ("in Dungeon Tiles"), and opening it opens the pack at that file, so the arrows still step through the rest. Filters and searches treat a file as its pack: a search for the pack's name finds all its files, one for a file's name finds only that file, and Kind: Packs shows the files that are in packs. Its pages are found under its own card. Its details, heart, collections and Select mode are the pack's, while Add to binder adds just that file. The choice is remembered, for browsing and searching alike.

Saved searches

When you've got a search, filter or order you'll want again, click Save search and give it a name. It keeps the search and every filter, the About the book chips too, not the results, so new books that match show up in it. It's pinned to the sidebar straight away.

Open a saved search and change something, and the Library says "You've changed this saved search." with Update saved search and Save as new. The Saved searches button in the Library lists every one, pinned or not, with rename and delete (and Undo).

Search inside a collection or binder

Inside a collection, the Library shows only that collection's books, and a chip above the results says so. Click its × (Show your whole library) to search everything again. A binder's Show these books in the Library does the same for the books in a binder.

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