Kival can be explored from several directions. Search is useful when you remember words; relationships and backlinks are useful when you know what something is connected to; Recent, Favorites, pins, and graph views help you return to or orient yourself around known material.
All of these surfaces respect the same access model.
Search current knowledge
Workspace search looks across the current versions of visible objects by default. It indexes title, body, and serialized metadata and ranks stronger matches ahead of broader ones, with title matches weighted more heavily than body and metadata matches.
Search results identify the immutable version that matched. In ordinary searches that is usually the current version.
Start with the wording you remember. The web application is designed to handle the normal discovery path without requiring you to choose search mechanics first.
Search history when wording changed
Kival can also search historical object versions. This is useful when you remember an old project name, superseded conclusion, or wording that was later rewritten.
A historical match still belongs to the same stable object; opening it lets you inspect that point in the object's version history without making the old text current again.
The CLI and API expose more exact controls, including field selection, lifecycle state, historical inclusion, and matching mode. See API or CLI when a script or investigation needs those semantics.
Follow context from an object
Search answers where something occurs. Backlinks and relationships answer what surrounds it.
From an object, inspect outgoing connections, incoming backlinks, and the local graph to find supporting material, downstream consequences, related decisions, or other nearby knowledge. Explicit relationships and textual references remain distinguishable so the origin of the connection is still visible.
Use the workspace graph for orientation
The workspace graph projects visible objects and their visible connections into a broader navigation surface. It is a view over existing object/connection state, not a separate knowledge store.
Use it to understand the shape of a workspace, find clusters, or approach a topic through its surrounding context. Objects you cannot read are not exposed through the graph.
Keep frequent knowledge close
Favorites maintain a personal collection of objects you return to often. Pins provide a smaller ordered set of shortcuts, and Recent surfaces recently updated objects you can access. Workspace pins serve the same purpose for workspace navigation.
These are personal attention tools, not shared taxonomy. Use object content, metadata, relationships, and references when structure should be shared with the rest of the team.
Use the command palette for navigation
The web application's command palette is optimized for quick actions and navigation among commands, workspaces, and objects already available to the current view. It is not a replacement for indexed workspace search.
Use search when you are looking for knowledge by content; use the command palette when you already know where you want to go.