Filter and refine search

/documents/search runs full-text search across your documents' titles and content and returns the best matches, each with a relevance score and the source document it came from. This guide shows how to narrow those results with filters and how to read the response.

The request

Only query is required. Everything else narrows or bounds the results.

curl https://nordvec.com/api/v1/documents/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NORDVEC_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": "renewal terms",
    "limit": 20,
    "datasource": "contracts",
    "sourceProvider": "google_drive",
    "createdAfter": "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z",
    "createdBefore": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z"
  }'

The response

{
  "results": [
    {
      "id": "…",
      "title": "Acme Corp Master Services Agreement",
      "snippet": "…renews automatically for successive twelve month terms…",
      "score": 0.82,
      "datasource": "contracts",
      "source_provider": "google_drive",
      "source_type": "…",
      "mime_type": "application/pdf",
      "status": "indexed",
      "created_at": "2026-02-14T09:00:00Z",
      "updated_at": "2026-02-14T09:00:00Z"
    }
  ],
  "totalCount": 7
}

Each result carries a snippet with the matching text, a score from 0 to 1 (higher is more relevant), and the source document's metadata so you can trace it back. totalCount is how many documents matched in total, which may be larger than the number of results you asked for with limit.

Reading the results

• Results are ranked by relevance, most relevant first. Use score to decide a cut-off if you only want strong matches.
• totalCount vs results.length: results holds up to limit items; totalCount is the full match count. If totalCount is much larger than your limit, tighten the query or add a filter rather than expecting every match back in one call.
• Only indexed documents are searchable. A document with status of processing or failed is not yet retrievable; see Documents & search for the lifecycle.

Next steps