# Search

<!-- toc -->

Crabidy has no search dialog. Searching is done by **editing the library
tree**: inside a provider's search subtree you create a node whose title
is your search term, and that node holds the results. The created node is
persistent — you can revisit it, queue from it, and (for providers that
allow it) rename or delete it — so a search is just another place in the
tree.

## Creating a search node

A node that accepts creation is marked **creatable**. When the currently
open node is creatable, press `%`: a one-line input opens at the bottom
of the library pane, you type a term and press `Enter` (or `Esc` to
cancel), and the term is sent to the provider as the title of a new
child node. The client then navigates into that node.

```admonish info
`%` acts on the **open** node, not the selected child — you enter a
search subtree (e.g. `/tidal/search`) and press `%` there. Creatable
nodes render with a `%` marker in the child list, and the pane title
shows a hint when the open node itself is creatable, so the affordance
is visible without documentation.
```

Creating a term that already exists returns the existing node rather than
erroring; empty or whitespace-only terms are rejected. Terms containing
`/` or `%` are safe: the term is percent-encoded into the path segment
while the node keeps the raw term as its display title.

## What the results look like

The shape depends on the provider:

- **[Tidal](./tidal.md)** — `/tidal/search/<term>` carries track results
  directly (queueable in place) and lists artist and album results as
  children whose paths are canonical (`/tidal/artists/<id>`, …), so
  diving into an artist reuses the normal browse machinery. The term
  node itself is not queueable.
- **[YouTube](./youtube.md)** — `/youtube/search/<term>` lists the top
  video results as tracks and *is* queueable, since the results are
  homogeneous.

In both cases results are a live view, fetched fresh when the node is
opened — nothing is cached. Terms live in memory for the life of the
server process.

```admonish note
This tree-editing search is distinct from the terminal client's `/`
**live filter**, which narrows the children already shown in the current
node without fetching anything. See the [Terminal UI](../clients/tui.md)
for that.
```