Inverted index

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ references:
paired_with: service-search.es.md
---

**service-search** answers full-text queries across millions of platform documents in microseconds, using a static binary inverted index built in Rust on the Tantivy library — and because the index is a file rather than a live database process, it can be copied to portable media and queried on any machine without additional dependencies. The service is a Ring 2 knowledge-and-processing component and conforms to the Data Archive and Retrieval Protocol (DARP) standard. It locates documents; it does not generate or classify them.
**service-search** answers full-text queries across millions of platform documents in microseconds, using a static binary inverted index built in Rust on the Tantivy library — and because the index is a file rather than a live database process, it can be copied to portable media and queried on any machine without additional dependencies. The service is a [[three-ring-architecture|Ring 2]] knowledge-and-processing component and conforms to the Data Archive and Retrieval Protocol (DARP) standard. It locates documents; it does not generate or classify them.

## Architectural Baseline

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ An inverted index works by building a compressed map from every word in the corp

## Ring and Role

service-search occupies **Ring 2 — Knowledge and Processing** in the three-ring architecture. Ring 2 is multi-tenant via `moduleId` namespacing and operates deterministically without AI inference. service-search's role within Ring 2 is retrieval: it answers queries against the indexed corpus and returns ranked document references that Ring 2 or Ring 3 services use for downstream processing. The service does not generate content or classify documents — it locates them.
service-search occupies **Ring 2 — Knowledge and Processing** in the [[three-ring-architecture]]. Ring 2 is multi-tenant via `moduleId` namespacing and operates deterministically without AI inference. service-search's role within Ring 2 is retrieval: it answers queries against the indexed corpus and returns ranked document references that Ring 2 or [[service-slm|Ring 3 services]] use for downstream processing. The service does not generate content or classify documents — it locates them.

## Structural Organization of Components

@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ The index is built as a static binary file. Key architectural properties:
- **Compressed.** Tantivy's index format uses block-maximal encoding for term frequency data, keeping the index compact relative to corpus size.
- **Updatable.** New documents are added to the index via a background indexing process that merges new segments. Queries can run against existing segments while new segments are being built.

The service is integrated with `app-workplace-presentation` for interactive search in the workplace application and with the system contracts layer for programmatic retrieval.
The service is integrated with [[service-extraction]] for post-parse indexing and with the system contracts layer for programmatic retrieval.

## Configuration

@@ -50,8 +50,8 @@ The service is integrated with `app-workplace-presentation` for interactive sear

## See also

- [[service-extraction]]
- [[service-slm]]
- [[service-people]]
- [[trajectory-substrate]]
- [[service-extraction]] — Ring 2 service whose parsed output is fed into the search index
- [[service-slm]] — Ring 3 intelligence layer that consumes ranked retrieval results
- [[service-people]] — identity ledger whose records form part of the searchable corpus
- [[trajectory-substrate]] — the substrate model for compounding retrieval intelligence over time