ix

Sub-millisecond code search via sparse trigram indexing.

ix builds a compressed trigram index that is typically 2-3× the source size for pure code, and can be smaller than the source for repetitive or binary-heavy repos (measured: 0.13× on a 1 GB mixed-content repo). The compaction pipeline — delta encoding → protobuf varint → ZSTD level 3 — achieves 88% reduction vs raw u32 storage and 60% additional savings on top of varint alone. The CDX trigram table uses a B-tree page architecture (block index → ZSTD-compressed 1024-entry blocks) for sub-50μs random access into compressed data.

This eliminates the linear-scan bottleneck of traditional tools on large codebases. Target hardware floor: 2015 CPU, 8 GB RAM.

Documentation

Install

cargo install moeix

Installs two binaries:

• ix — CLI search tool
• ixd — background daemon (requires notify feature, enabled by default)

You only need ix for search. Install ixd if you want continuous indexing.

Quick Start

# Build the index
ix --build /path/to/repo

# Literal search
ix "fn validate"

# Regex search
ix --regex "fn\s+\w+_handler"

# Context lines around each match
ix --context 3 "TODO"

# Show query statistics
ix --stats "struct Config"

# Only matching file paths
ix --files-only "error"

# Count matches only
ix --count "TODO"

# Filter by file extension
ix --type rs --type py "fn main"

Daemon

ixd watches one or more directories for file changes and incrementally updates the index:

# Single directory
ixd /path/to/repo

# Multiple directories (v0.9+)
ixd /project-a /project-b /project-c

Each directory runs on its own thread with independent index, watcher, beacon, and Unix domain socket. Signal handling and memory monitoring are shared.

Service Management (Linux / systemd)

# Install as a user-level systemd service
ix service install /path/to/repo

# Start / stop / restart the service
ix service start
ix service stop
ix service restart

The service auto-starts on login and survives reboots. See docs/DAEMON-RUNBOOK.md for full operation guide.

Daemon Socket

The daemon exposes a Unix domain socket for external consumers (editors, tooling):

$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/ixd/{hash}.sock

Protocol is NDJSON — one JSON object per newline-terminated line. See docs/SOCKET-API.md. The ix CLI reads the index file directly, not through the socket.

Configuring the Daemon

Scope what the daemon watches and indexes with .ixd.toml:

# .ixd.toml
watch_roots = ["src", "lib"]
exclude_patterns = [".git", "node_modules", "target", "vendor"]

See docs/.ixd.toml.md for full schema and examples.

How It Works

1. Extract — ix --build walks the directory, extracts byte-level trigrams (skipping null bytes to nullify binary noise), and caps at 64 offset samples per trigram for files >1 MB.
2. Accumulate — Trigrams are grouped into posting lists (one per unique trigram). An external sort with 500K-entry flush threshold keeps RAM constant regardless of repository size.
3. Compress — Posting lists and the trigram table use the same pipeline: delta-encode adjacent file IDs and offsets → protobuf varint → ZSTD level 3. The CDX trigram table is organized as a B-tree: a 12-byte-per-1024-entry block index for O(log N) lookup, then decompress one ~5 KB block to find the target.
4. Plan — On search, the query is decomposed into trigrams. The block index finds the target block, one ZSTD call decompresses it, and a linear scan finds the posting list offset.
5. Verify — Candidates are filtered through per-file bloom filters (256 B, 0.7% false-positive rate), then streamed through a regex matcher with constant memory usage.

Compaction Pipeline (measured)

Raw u32 entries  →  delta-encode  →  varint  →  ZSTD level 3
  10.6 MB             2-3× smaller     60% more     88% total reduction
                                                      (1.3 MB final)

Index Format (v1.3)

All integers little-endian, offsets absolute from file start, 8-byte aligned.

CDX compression is always-on since v1.3. Not backward compatible with v1.1/v1.2 — rebuild indexes after upgrading:

rm -rf .ix/
ix --build .

Performance

Measured on a 2015-era CPU (Haswell equivalent), 8 GB RAM. All ratios verified from actual indexes.

ix wins when the trigram index eliminates most files from scanning. On small repos or queries where every file matches, linear-scan tools like ripgrep are faster.

Feature Flags

Library

ix is also a library (moeix on crates.io, ix as the crate name):

[dependencies]
moeix = "0.11"

use ix::reader::Reader;
use ix::executor::{Executor, QueryOptions};
use ix::planner::Planner;

let reader = Reader::open(".ix/shard.ix")?;
let plan = Planner::plan("struct Config", false);
let mut executor = Executor::new(&reader);
let (matches, stats) = executor.execute(&plan, &QueryOptions::default())?;

See docs.rs/moeix for the full API reference.

Building

cargo build --all-features
cargo test --all-features
cargo clippy --all-features -- -D warnings

Requires Rust 1.85+.

License

MIT