Full-text search across parsed module manuals, product pages, and firmware release notes.

Use this only when the question is about content that lives in continuous prose rather than in typed fields:

• Procedural: calibration sequences, button combos, factory-reset steps, save/load procedures.

• Diagnostic: LED color meanings, error indicators, troubleshooting trees.

• Firmware specifics beyond the short notes on firmware_versions (which only carry the headline change).

• Panel walkthroughs and prose explanations that aren't captured as parameters/jacks/zones.

Do NOT call this for content already in get_module: a parameter's behavior, a jack's signal type or polarity, a mode's name or description, capability tags, HP, or power draw. Those are typed and authoritative there.

Do NOT call this to summarize a module — that's get_module's job. search_manual returns excerpts, not summaries.

Returned chunks are source prose, not typed facts. Read them to ground your answer, then paraphrase and point the user to the source to verify (cite-and-point, not reproduce — SKILL.md §8). text is capped (~800 chars); the full passage is at audit_url.

Args:

• query (string, required): search terms. Plain words are AND'd by default ("calibration LED" matches chunks mentioning both). If the AND match returns 0 rows, the server retries with OR (any-token match) and sets _meta.relaxed_to_or=true on the response — so a long natural-language query like "cascade mode time inner outer delay" still surfaces something useful instead of zeroing out. Best practice is still 2–4 distinctive keywords; the OR fallback is a safety net, not a substitute. Query is tokenized to alphanumeric runs; FTS5 punctuation is stripped.

• module_id (string, optional): "/" — restrict to one module. Strongly recommended when the user has named a module.

• source_id (integer, optional): restrict to one source. Use when you already have a source_id from get_source / list_references and want to dig into that specific document.

• source_type (string, optional): one of "manual", "product_page", "firmware_notes". Defaults to all.

• limit (integer, optional): default 5, max 20. Smaller is usually better — top-3 hits cover most queries.

Returns: { "query": string, "matches": [{ "chunk_id": number, "source_id": number, "source_type": string, "source_title": string | null, "module_id": string | null, "heading_path": string, // "Calibration > Tuning Procedure" "snippet": string, // BM25-highlighted excerpt with [matches] in brackets "text": string, // chunk text, capped ~800 chars; paraphrase, don't paste "truncated": boolean, // true if text was trimmed; full passage at audit_url "audit_url": string, // human-readable audit page for the source "rank": number // BM25 score (more negative = better match) }], "total": number, // total matches across the corpus (capped at 200) "_meta": { "kind": "manual_excerpt", "query": , "relaxed_to_or": true // only present when AND returned 0 and OR retry fired } }

Examples:

• "How do I calibrate Plaits' V/Oct?" → { query: "calibration V/Oct", module_id: "mutable-instruments/plaits" }

• "What does the red LED on Marbles mean?" → { query: "red LED", module_id: "mutable-instruments/marbles" }

• "How do I reset Pamela's New Workout to defaults?" → { query: "factory reset defaults", module_id: "alm-busy-circuits/pamelas-new-workout" }

• "What changed in Plaits firmware 1.2?" → { query: "1.2", module_id: "mutable-instruments/plaits", source_type: "firmware_notes" }

Errors:

• Returns matches=[] with total=0 if nothing matches. Not an error.

• Errors only on malformed input (missing query, invalid limit, unknown source_type).