# Documents & search
Source: https://nordvec.com/docs/guides/concepts/documents#searching

## Searching [#searching]

`/documents/search` is **full-text** search over the title and the whole text
of every document you can see, however long the document is. Words match in the
form you write them, in any language, and accents are ignored on both sides, so
`cafe` finds `café`. There is no stemming: `invoice` does not match `invoices`.

Search runs standalone, without conversation context. It returns ranked
documents, each with a snippet from its best-matching passage and a relevance
score from 0 up to, but never reaching, 1.

```bash
curl https://nordvec.com/api/v1/documents/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NORDVEC_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "query": "renewal terms", "limit": 10 }'
```

You can also list documents (`/documents/list`) or fetch one by id
(`/documents/{id}`). See the [API reference](/docs/api) for the full set of
parameters and response shapes.

### Try it [#try-it]

Run a query against a small demo corpus. This searches six sample documents in
your browser, ranked and sourced, the same shape a real search returns.

<LiveSearchDemo />

Semantic retrieval, which matches passages by meaning rather than exact words,
is what powers a [conversation's](/docs/guides/concepts/conversations) cited
answers. The search endpoint itself matches words.

<Callout>
Search only ever returns documents the caller is allowed to see. Access is
enforced in the database, not in application code.
</Callout>