Finding things
Search inside the scene, and the spotlight that lights up every match at once.
Searching a file tree gives you a list. Searching the 3D view gives you a list and lights up every match where it actually lives — so you see not just what matched, but whether the matches are clustered in one corner of the project or scattered across all of it.
Opening search#
Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on macOS) with the 3D view in front of you.
A search card appears at the top right, reading Search the graph…. Escape dismisses it and clears the results.
The shortcut is deliberately polite about context: if you're typing in the code editor or the chat box, Ctrl+F is their find, not the graph's. It only takes over when you're actually looking at the scene.
Note
This is the one control in the 3D viewer with no visible affordance — no button, no icon. It is also not in Settings → Keybindings, so it can't be remapped. Ctrl+F is the door.
What lights up#
Start typing — two characters is enough — and results arrive under three headings: Directories, Files and Symbols. Symbols show the line they're on.
At the same time the graph ignites. Every match gets its own colour, and the wire leading to it glows in that colour, thicker than usual, with a particle running along it. The camera pulls back to frame the whole matched set, so you can see the spread at a glance.
If a match is inside a folder you haven't opened, the folder lights instead — the graph tells you "it's in here" rather than silently omitting it.
Results are capped — roughly twenty apiece for directories, files and symbols. On a broad query you're seeing a strong sample, not an exhaustive list. Narrow the query and the graph narrows with it, which is usually the faster way to find the thing anyway.
Important
The spotlight adds light; it doesn't take it away. Unmatched parts of the graph stay exactly as bright as they were, so on a dense folder expect matches to stand out by colour and motion rather than by contrast.
The other two ways the graph highlights things do dim, to different depths. Clicking a node dims the wires outside its dependency radius but leaves every node at full brightness. Dragging a node is the strongest of the three — it fades unconnected wires and nodes down to almost nothing, which is why grabbing something is the quickest way to isolate it.
The legend#
Once anything is lit, a card appears bottom right titled Spotlight. It's the colour key: one row per lit node, each carrying the exact colour that node's wire is glowing with, so you can tell which glowing wire is which file.
Rows can carry two extra notes. +3 inside means that folder is standing in for three matches
you can't see yet. ×2 means that one node absorbed more than one match.
At the bottom: how many matches were found, how many nodes are actually lit (4 files · 2 folders),
and how many are hiding inside collapsed folders.
Clicking a row flies you to that node — and deliberately leaves the result set alone. You can walk the whole list one at a time without losing your search.
Moving through results#
Arrow up and down move through the list. Enter picks one, and the camera flies into it.
Picking a result doesn't open the file or leave the view. It takes you there. Opening is a separate decision, made with the drill button on the node's card.
When the agent searches#
The spotlight isn't only yours. When an agent greps your project or reads a batch of files, the same lighting fires on the files it touched — and the legend card shows an agent badge so you know the light isn't yours.
It's a quietly useful signal. You watch the agent's search light up six files across three folders, and you learn where it thinks the problem lives before it says a word about it.
An agent's spotlight fades on its own after about twelve seconds. Yours stays until you clear it.