You've cataloged hundreds of items, scanned dozens of receipts, and had countless conversations with your AI. Now you need to find that one specific thing. Good news: search in ambientChat understands what you mean, not just what you type.

#What It Does

Search in ambientChat is powered by AI embeddings — a fancy way of saying it understands the meaning behind your words, not just the exact letters. When you search for "red kitchen knife," it finds your "Victorinox 8-inch Chef's Knife (Fibrox Pro, Red Handle)" even though you didn't type any of those exact words. It understands that a chef's knife is a kitchen knife, and that Fibrox Pro Red means the handle is red.

This semantic search works across three domains:

  • Inventory — Find items by describing them naturally. "Coffee stuff," "things I bought at Target," "electronics worth over $100."
  • Documents — Search your receipts, manuals, warranties, and other uploaded documents by what they contain, not just their filenames.
  • Chat History — Find past conversations by topic. "What did we discuss about meal planning?" surfaces the relevant exchange even if those exact words weren't used.

Traditional keyword search is also available in the search bars — type a word and it matches against item names, brands, and descriptions. But the real magic is in semantic search, which happens automatically when you ask the AI in chat.

#How to Use It

#iOS App

#Searching Your Inventory

  1. Tap the Context tab, then the Inventory sub-tab
  2. Tap the search bar at the top of the screen
  3. Type your search terms — results filter in real time as you type
  4. This is keyword-based search: it matches against item names, brands, descriptions, and categories
  5. Combine with category chips below the search bar to narrow results further

For semantic search (meaning-based), use chat instead — see the "Via Chat" section below.

#Searching Your Documents

  1. Tap the Context tab, then the Documents sub-tab
  2. Tap the search bar at the top
  3. Type to filter documents by name or content
  4. Results include receipts, manuals, warranties, and any other uploaded documents

#Searching Chat History

Your conversation history is searchable through the AI itself. Ask in chat:

  • "What did we talk about last week?"
  • "Find our conversation about home insurance."
  • "When did I ask you about my camera collection?"

The AI searches your past exchanges and surfaces relevant conversations.

#Web

Each tab in the web interface has its own search box:

  1. Open My AI Context and pick Inventory, Documents, or Q&A
  2. Click the search icon and type — results refine as you type. Your words can be in any order and needn't sit next to each other: "inventory into folders" finds "sort the inventory items in the home folder into sub folders", because every word is in it. Word endings don't matter ("survive" finds "Surviving", "batteries" finds "battery"), a number matches its spelled-out form ("5 rules" finds "Five Rules"), and little words like "to" or "the" aren't required
  3. Under the matches, More by meaning lists documents that fit what you searched for without containing your words — including documents other people shared with you — whether you filed them in your library or not, and documents inside folders shared with you — marked with who shared them
  4. Inventory matches name, brand, category, and description; Documents matches title, type, store, tags and the text inside the document; Q&A matches your questions, the answers, and conversation names
  5. Every result says where it lives — the folder it is filed in, or Home — so you can find a document again without remembering which folder you put it in. Same on iOS

Every one of these is answered by the server over everything you have — never just what the tab happened to load — and a line under the box says how complete the answer is: "9 matches" is the whole story; "9+ matches — scroll for more" means keep scrolling. The same is true of the search boxes in the iOS app, where offline the line says it could only look at what is already on your phone. For meaning-based search ("things for the party"), ask in chat.

#Searching Settings

Can't remember where a setting lives? Search for it.

  • iOS: open Settings and tap the yellow search button in the bottom-left corner — the same button Documents and Inventory use.
  • Web: open Settings and click Search settings at the top of the page. On a phone-sized browser it's the yellow search button in the bottom-left corner.

Type what you're after. Search looks at each setting's name, the words on its screen, and the everyday words people use for it — so "tokens" finds AI Model Selection (which has the Show AI tokens switch), "password" finds Security, and "invoice" finds Billing history. When the match came from a sentence inside the screen, that sentence is shown under the result so you can see why it matched.

Tap a result to go straight there. Once you're on the setting you found, the search button gets out of the way so it doesn't cover anything; it comes back when you return to the top of Settings. Nothing matched? The panel offers the Don't Panic guides instead.

With VoiceOver or a screen reader, each result reads as the setting and the sentence that matched, and the number of matches is announced as you type.

AI assistants (ours in chat, or Claude/ChatGPT connected through MCP) don't need the search button: they can list most settings with list_setting_dimensions, read them with list_user_settings, and change one with update_user_setting — just ask "turn off haptics".

#Via Chat

Chat is where semantic search truly shines. Instead of guessing the right keywords, just describe what you want in plain language:

Inventory searches:

  • "Find my coffee-related items."
  • "What kitchen tools do I have?"
  • "Show me everything from Costco."
  • "Do I have any AA batteries?"
  • "What's the most expensive thing in my inventory?"

Document searches:

  • "Find receipts from January."
  • "Show me the warranty for my vacuum cleaner."
  • "What does my TV manual say about wall mounting?"
  • "Find any documents mentioning insurance."

Conversation searches:

  • "What did we discuss about meal planning?"
  • "Remind me what you suggested for organizing my garage."
  • "Find the conversation where I asked about my medication interactions."

The AI interprets your intent, searches the relevant domain (or all of them), and returns what you're looking for. No Boolean operators, no exact-match frustration, no "did you mean?" loops.

#Via Claude Desktop (MCP)

If you've connected ambientChat.ai to Claude Desktop via MCP, these search tools are available:

  • search_items — Semantic search across inventory. Finds items by meaning, not just keywords ("things in my garage", "snacks for the party")
  • search_documents — Find a document by its name or words. Searches every document you own, however old, and the documents other people shared with you, ranking title matches first — a shared one says who shared it. It also lists documents that match by meaning
  • search_documents_semantic — AI-powered semantic search across documents, including ones shared with you. Long documents come back as an excerpt; the AI opens the full text when it needs it
  • search_markdown_content — Semantic + keyword search across your written markdown documents
  • recall_history — Search past conversation history by topic. Filter by channel (voice/text/mcp), platform, session, or date range
  • web_search — Search the web for current information when you need real-time data

For the full tool reference, see MCP Tools — Complete Reference.

Example prompts in Claude Desktop:

  • "Search my ambientChat inventory for anything chocolate-related."
  • "Find my ambientChat receipts from the last month."
  • "What have I discussed with ambientChat about home organization?"

#Tips & Tricks

  • Be descriptive, not precise. Search understands meaning, so "red kitchen knife" works better than trying to remember the exact brand name. Describe the item the way you'd describe it to a friend, and let the AI figure out the match.
  • Search works across all fields. Inventory search checks item names, brands, descriptions, categories, locations, and notes. If you stored "garage shelf 3" in an item's location field, searching "garage" will find it.
  • Use chat for complex queries. The search bar in the Inventory tab does keyword matching. For anything nuanced — "what food do I have that goes with pasta?" or "electronics I bought more than a year ago" — ask the AI in chat. It combines semantic search with reasoning to give you exactly what you need.

#Options

Setting What It Does Default
Inventory Search Bar Keyword search across item names, brands, and descriptions Empty (show all)
Document Search Bar Keyword search across document names and content Empty (show all)
Category Filter Narrow inventory results to a specific category All categories
MCP query parameter Natural language search string for MCP tools Required for search
MCP limit parameter Number of results to return (for recall_history) 5

#Known Limitations

  • Newly added items may not be immediately searchable. When you scan or add an item, the system generates an AI embedding (a mathematical representation of the item's meaning) that powers semantic search. This takes a few seconds. If you search immediately after adding something and don't find it, wait a moment and try again.
  • Keyword search matches words, not meanings. The search bars in the Inventory and Documents tabs forgive word endings and numbers, but searching for "knife" won't find "blade" or "cutting tool." For meaning-based search, ask the AI in chat.
  • Very large inventories may return many results. If you have hundreds of items and search for something broad like "food," you'll get a long list. Narrow your search with more specific terms or combine with category filters.
  • Chat history search depends on conversation being saved. Only conversations that were logged to your history are searchable. If a conversation was lost due to a connectivity issue, it won't appear in history searches.

#Version History

Version Date What Changed
12 2026-10-06 Search Settings. A search button on the Settings screen (iOS) and page (web) finds a setting by its name, the words on its screen, or an everyday word for it, and takes you straight there
11 2026-10-02 Document results say which folder they're in. A document found by search now shows the folder it is filed in — or Home — under its name, in list and grid views, on iOS and the web, the way inventory results already did. Connected AIs are told the folder too (AMB-1137)
10 2026-09-28 When More by meaning can't run, the assistant says so. If the meaning-based half of a document search fails, the assistant — ours, or a connected AI like Claude or ChatGPT — now says it couldn't check for related documents, instead of telling you nothing else relates. The exact matches are unaffected (AMB-1526)
9 2026-09-28 A connected AI finds a shared document by its title. Ask Claude, Grok or ChatGPT for a presentation someone shared with you by its name and it comes back among the results, marked with who shared it — no longer tucked below your own documents where the AI picked a similarly named one of yours instead. The AI can also open it by the id search gives, like one of your own
8 2026-09-28 Documents shared with you are searched, filed or not. More by meaning now also finds documents shared with you that you never filed, and documents inside folders shared with you — on iOS, the web, chat and connected AIs. Up to 200 shared documents are searched each time (the ones you filed first, then the newest); a document shared with Everyone is searched once you file it. A document shared directly can be removed from your list right there; one inside a shared folder goes with its folder
7 2026-09-28 Documents shared with you show up in search. Under the matches, More by meaning now includes documents someone shared with you and you filed in your library, with who shared them — tap to open, just like in its folder. On iOS and the web
6 2026-09-28 Word forms, numbers, and older documents. "survive" finds "Surviving", "5" finds "Five", and filler words like "to" are no longer required — on iOS, the web and chat. An AI connected through MCP (Claude, Grok, ChatGPT) now searches every document you own, not only your 200 newest, and sees matching documents shared with you
5 2026-09-25 Words in any order. A search matches when every word you typed is somewhere in the item, document or conversation — not only when they sit together in that order. Same on iOS (including offline), the web and chat
4 2026-09-15 Q&A search covers every conversation, on iOS and web. The phone used to search only the newest 200 conversations it had loaded; web stopped at 100. Both now ask the server, scroll through every match, and say how complete the answer is under the box ("1 match" / "200+ matches — scroll for more"); offline, iOS says it only looked at this phone
3 2026-06-07 Added Web section — searching inventory/documents/Q&A in the web interface
2 2026-05-27 Updated MCP tools section with current tool names + added web_search and markdown search (AMB-188)
1 2026-03-01 Initial guide