Pagefind

The default

Pagefind is what you get with no configuration at all — PUBLIC_SVOCS_SEARCH_PROVIDER unset, nothing to install beyond what’s already in package.json.

How it works

bun run build does two things: vite build prerenders every page to static HTML, then pagefind --site build crawls that HTML and writes a WASM-powered search index into build/pagefind/. The ⌘K dialog dynamically imports pagefind/pagefind.js on first use and queries it entirely client-side — no server, no API keys.

Testing it locally

Pagefind’s index only exists after a build — bun run dev has nothing to query, so ⌘K will 404 on pagefind/pagefind.js there by design. Run bun run build then bun run preview to test it against the real index.

Why you might switch away from it

Pagefind indexes rendered HTML, so results are whatever text ends up on the page — including decorative UI text if you’re not careful with data-pagefind-ignore. If you want cleaner excerpts sourced from frontmatter/sidecar description fields instead, see Orama or FlexSearch; if you want semantic (“how do I deploy this” matching a page that never says those words) search, see Chroma.

Reference

• Indexing: pagefind --site build, dispatched by scripts/search/postbuild.mjs
• Client: src/lib/search/providers/pagefind-client.ts