AI Search
AI Search lets you search your entire library using natural language, without selecting any books first.
How to Use AI Search
Open AI Search
- Click "AI Search" in the plugin menu, or
- Use the shortcut
Ctrl+Shift+L, or - Simply open the Ask dialog without selecting any books
Ask questions about your library
- "Do you have any books about Python programming?"
- "Show me books by Isaac Asimov"
- "Find books about machine learning"
- "What science fiction books do I have?"
Open the book in response
AI will search through your library metadata and recommend relevant books, and you can open the book in response by clicking the book title.
Update your library index (recommended)
- Open Configuration -> Search tab
- Click "Update Library Data" to index titles and authors for all books in your library
- Run this again after adding or removing books
Features
- Natural Language Search: Ask in plain language, no special syntax needed
- Library-Wide: Indexes and searches your full calibre library (compact metadata: book ID, title, author)
- Smart Matching: AI understands context and can find related books
- Click to Open: Click on book titles in the results to open them directly
- Large Selection Helper: If you select more than 50 books, Ask suggests AI Search instead of stuffing verbose metadata into the prompt
Tips for AI Search
- Be specific about what you're looking for
- You can ask about genres, authors, topics, or any metadata
- AI Search works best with well-organized library metadata
- For library-wide discovery, use AI Search — do not select thousands of books manually
- For comparing a few books in depth, select up to about 30 books instead