a run, end to end

Four steps, and the third is the one that matters

What actually happens between a question and an answer. Read it in order — the fourth step means nothing without the first, which is why this is a sequence and not a row of cards.

The whole thing, in one run

Where the four steps below end up. It is here rather than at the foot of the page because a reader who opens it needs nothing else, and one who prefers to read has the same four steps under it.

The end of the run, running. Scroll it: the source and the version binding are under the answer.

step 01

It reads your installation, once

The server starts as a subprocess of your editor and asks the project what it is: which release, which packages, which of them actually booted. Nothing goes back, and nothing leaves the machine — the first answer is available before the index has finished.

read-only · 0 requests out

The package registry as the server reads it, with three packages marked as not booted

step 02

You ask in the words you already use

A question is a sentence, not a query language. “which icon means delete” and “actions-delete” reach the same answer, because the index carries what a thing is for beside its name.

typically 18 ms

A search for “delete” returning three identifiers with their purposes

step 03

The answer says where it came from

Every result names its source and the releases it holds for. That is the difference between an answer and a guess: a reader can check it, and a reader who cannot check an answer has to trust the tool, which is the thing this exists to avoid.

4 releases · 1 source named

An answer with its source and version binding shown beneath it

step 04

What changed arrives as what changed

Where an answer is about a difference between two releases, it arrives as the difference — the lines that moved, in the file they moved in, rather than a paragraph describing them.

down to 7.0

A changelog entry rendered as a diff, with two lines removed and two added

Left out of the tour

Two things this does not do, said here rather than discovered later. A tour that only shows what works is a tour that gets believed once.

It cannot answer about a release it has never seen

Bundled knowledge stops where the last release stopped. Asked about a newer one, it says so instead of answering from the nearest thing it has.

Three tools need a bootable installation

Without one they read the package registry instead, which answers with a subset that looks like the whole — and says which one it gave you.