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lore show

Search and display documents from your corpus.

Synopsis

lore show [keyword] [flags]

What Does This Do?

lore show searches your corpus by keyword and displays matching documents. Give it a term, and it finds every document whose title or content matches.

Analogy: If .lore/docs/ is your project's corpus, lore show is the search that surfaces the exact entry where you documented "authentication".

Real World Scenario

Code review. The reviewer asks: "Why JWT instead of sessions?" Instead of digging through Slack, you search your corpus:

lore show "JWT"

3 seconds later, the full reasoning is on screen — written the day the decision was made.

lore show

Arguments

Argument Required Description
keyword Yes (unless --all) Search term — matches titles and content

Flags

Flag Type Default Description
--type <type> string — Show only documents of this type
--after <date> string — Show documents after this date (YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD)
--all bool false Show all documents (prefer lore list for listing)
--quiet bool false Machine-readable output (tab-separated)
--feature bool — Shorthand for --type feature
--decision bool — Shorthand for --type decision
--bugfix bool — Shorthand for --type bugfix
--refactor bool — Shorthand for --type refactor
--note bool — Shorthand for --type note

Note: Type shorthands are mutually exclusive — you can't use --feature and --decision at the same time.

How Search Works

Lore searches the title and content of every document in .lore/docs/. Search is exact, not fuzzy — a keyword must appear verbatim to match.

One Result → Shows It Directly

lore show "JWT auth"

---
type: decision
date: 2026-02-15
commit: b2c3d4e
branch: feature/jwt-auth
scope: auth
---
# Add JWT auth middleware

## Why
Stateless authentication scales better than sessions...

Branch & scope are captured automatically at commit time (see Branch Awareness). They are omitted from front matter when unavailable (detached HEAD, no conventional scope).

Multiple Results → Interactive Selection (TTY)

lore show "auth"

  1  decision  Add JWT auth middleware        2026-02-15
  2  refactor  Extract auth middleware        2026-03-01
  3  feature   Add OAuth2 provider           2026-03-10

Select [1-3]:

Multiple Results → List (Non-TTY / Quiet)

When piped or with --quiet, output is tab-separated (for scripting):

lore show "auth" --quiet
# decision  Add JWT auth middleware 2026-02-15
# refactor  Extract auth middleware 2026-03-01

Examples

# Find documents about "database"
lore show "database"

# Find all decisions
lore show "api" --decision

# Find recent documents
lore show "rate" --after 2026-03

Combining with Other Commands

# Find and pipe to less
lore show "auth" --quiet | less

# Count decisions about a topic
lore show "auth" --decision --quiet | wc -l

# Export a document
lore show "JWT auth" > auth-decision.md

Common Questions

"No results — what am I doing wrong?"

  • Check spelling — search is exact, not fuzzy.
  • Try a broader term: "auth" instead of "authentication middleware".
  • Confirm documents exist: lore list.

"How is this different from lore list?"

Command Purpose
lore list Show ALL documents with metadata (type, date, tags)
lore show Search for specific documents by keyword and display content

Think of it as: lore list = table of contents, lore show = reading a specific chapter.

Tips & Tricks

  • Pipe-friendly: lore show "auth" --quiet | less for paging through results.
  • Export: lore show "JWT auth" > auth-decision.md saves a document to a file.
  • Combine with grep: lore show "api" --quiet | grep decision — filter results.
  • No results? Try broader terms — search is exact, not fuzzy.
  • Type shorthands: --decision is faster to type than --type decision.

Exit Codes

Code Meaning
0 Match found
2 No matches (not an error — just nothing found)
3 No keyword provided

See Also