HybridSearch combines genuine lexical and Google multimodal retrieval. The CLI and desktop use the same service; it has no desktop-shell dependency.

search, search_semantic and search_semantic_with_origin preserve grouped parent files. ANN candidates expand until enough unique eligible parents exist or the complete bounded eligible chunk set is requested. Filename/type/folder, size/date/duration and explicit source filters apply before ANN top-k. Media candidate filesystem metadata is checked once per parent per query. Ninety-six near-identical video vectors cannot hide a second eligible parent (regression tested). HNSW remains approximate retrieval, not an exact recall guarantee.

Explicit spoken/audio wording prefers actual audio-source vectors, preserving exact lexical filename priority. Conservative English/German token cues detect requests such as “someone mentions”, “spoken”, “audio”, “jemand erwähnt” and “Gespräch”. Visual/document cues veto automatic routing. This finite parser is not language understanding; paraphrases, negation and mixed intents can remain ambiguous. If the preferred lane has no eligible results, ordinary retrieval is used. SemanticOrigin::All bypasses the hint; Audio, Image, Video and Text select an explicit channel without fallback or reembedding.

Persisted custom sampling limits can be reopened without generating embeddings again only when the complete model and preprocessing fingerprint matches. The custom suffix must contain the eight valid numeric sampling limits. Model or preprocessing changes never silently reuse incompatible vectors.

search_measured(query,limit,options,debug) returns SearchResponse with results and monotonic total milliseconds/result count. Basic mode stores no trace. search_traced(...,&mut TraceCollector,parent) shares the native request clock so queue/lock time and actual engine stages remain comparable. Debug mode adds bounded nested spans for lexical SQL, query embedding, worker diagnostics, filtered eligibility and its cache, ANN read/checksum/deserialization/search passes, parent materialization and validation, and rank fusion. Static stage names and numerical counters exclude query/source text and paths. Worker-local microsecond counters have a separate clock and are not aligned request spans.

Measured/source APIs retain existing result behavior except the explicit spoken/audio preference. Debug instrumentation does not change vector policy. Audio timestamps represent segment starts, not exact word locations. Smaller windows alone have not demonstrated accurate spoken navigation. No-answer calibration, music discrimination, exact spoken positions, process isolation, unchanged-vector reuse and production platform checks remain release gates.