Index your first folder

This walks through indexing a folder from a clean install, using the CLI. Everything here works the same way from the desktop app, under Add Folder.

Pick a folder

Start with something small, a single notes vault or a project directory, rather than your whole home folder. You can always add more folders later.

quarry index ~/notes

This creates a new index named after the folder, notes, and begins an initial scan. The scan reads every file once, extracts text, and writes it to the index directory under ~/.local/share/quarry/notes/. See Project structure for what that directory contains.

Watch the scan finish

For a folder of a few thousand files, the initial scan usually finishes in under a minute. Larger folders take longer. Check progress with:

quarry status

notes        12,403 files   indexed   daemon: running

Once quarry status reports the file count as stable across two checks a few seconds apart, the scan is done. After that, new and edited files are picked up automatically as the daemon watches the folder.

Run a search

quarry search "project plan"

Each result includes a path, a relevance score, and a short snippet showing the match in context. Quoting a phrase searches for that exact phrase. The full grammar is in Query syntax.

Name the index explicitly

By default the index name comes from the folder name. To choose your own:

quarry index ~/work/2026-notes --name work-notes

Index names matter once you have more than one, since quarry search can be scoped to a single index with --index, and the HTTP endpoint accepts the same name as a filter.

Add a second folder

quarry index ~/code/quarry-site --name site-code

Free is limited to one index. Adding a second index requires Pro. Run quarry status to see every index and its file count:

quarry status

notes        12,403 files   indexed   daemon: running
site-code     1,822 files   indexed   daemon: running

Rebuilding

If a scan is interrupted, or the index looks wrong for any reason, rebuild it from the source files:

quarry reindex notes

This drops the existing index directory and scans from scratch. Nothing is deleted from the original folder. See Index format for why this is always safe.

Next, Project structure covers exactly what Quarry writes to disk, and Include and exclude rules covers narrowing what gets scanned.