Sandcastle Semantic Search: We’d Like Your Feedback
Sandcastle’s semantic search has been available for a few months now, and we would like to learn from the community how it has worked in practice. The feature uses an embedding model alongside the existing search experience to help find examples when the words in a query do not exactly match an example’s name, description, or code.
We have also seen reports of friction related to the feature, typically around the downloading of the embedding model. We want to be direct about both sides of that tradeoff before deciding how semantic search should work going forward.
What we’d like your feedback on
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Has semantic search noticeably helped you find the right Sandcastle examples? In particular, have you found useful results that the previous text-based search would likely have missed?
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Have you encountered any issues with Sandcastle because semantic search is enabled? This includes development workflows such as building Sandcastle, as well as normal use in the browser.
Specific examples are especially helpful. For search improvements, please share the query you used and why the result was more useful. For issues, please include any error messages or unexpected behavior.
This feedback will help us decide whether the feature should remain enabled by default, have a more prominent or stricter feature flag, or move toward an opt-in experience.