Traditional forum searches are mostly literal—whatever you search, it just looks for posts containing those three characters.
When we search for "little chicken," all those great posts labeled "VPS" are out of our reach.

• It forces everyone to use "formal language" to ask questions—this isn't the way MJJ talks.
• As we said in the origin story: N.HT will be a "new friend who understands all the jargon and memes of MJJs." This post is about making that promise come true in the search box.

1. First, make sure you can actually "find things"

The backend uses Meilisearch, so let's get the basics solid:

Full-text search — Titles, content, and tags all go into the index. Searches are fast and tolerant (even if you mistype a character or two, it can still recall results).
Three-dimensional filtering — Filter by section, tag, or author, and you can combine them (multiple conditions intersect); when selecting multiple tags, posts must have all of them.
Empty keyword — If you don't enter a keyword and just pick a section or tag, you can simply browse a certain type of post as needed.

2. "Secret codes" in the search box

You don't necessarily have to click the panel to filter; you can just type secret codes directly in the search box:

@someone — Only see posts by this author.
#word — Dual purpose: first tries to find a section, if not found then looks for a tag (this trick is learned from Discourse).

3. Making search understand jargon

The jargon system is the real star here. With the powerful AI capabilities of NHT, how could it not understand MJJ's jargon?

Custom dictionary: Based on current mainstream host and AI tech community discussions, we've extracted lots of users' jargon and added it to the dictionary.
Learning ability: Real-time internet trends and frequently searched terms on the forum are all learning targets, constantly improving the jargon system.

4. What you can find is only what you should be able to see

Search is convenient, but there's a red line: it will never become a backdoor for overstepping permissions.

Only public posts are included in the search index—private posts, posts only visible to yourself, soft-deleted posts, and sensitive posts in "login required" sections are all excluded. In other words, what you can find in search is always only what you already have permission to see; nothing will leak out just because "you used a different entry point."

After a few years, the most valuable thing in a forum is never today's hottest post, but that old post from three years ago that you can still find. What search and jargon aim to do is to prevent these things from being buried just because "you can't remember the standard term."

But no matter how much technology evolves, the soul of the community is still every tinkering "old-timer" and new friend.