Index Command

zetl index builds or refreshes the link index for a vault.

Usage

zetl -d ./my-vault index

What it does

1. Scans all .md files in the vault directory (recursively)
2. Parses each file with pulldown-cmark, extracting concepts/Wikilinks and concepts/Spindle Lisp blocks — see architecture/Scanner
3. Builds the Link Graph — a directed graph of page-to-page links
4. Computes Merkle Tree hashes for content-addressable blocks
5. Writes the index to .zetl/index.json — see architecture/Cache

Incremental behavior

On subsequent runs, zetl uses two-tier cache invalidation:

• Tier 1 (mtime): If a file’s modification time hasn’t changed, skip it entirely
• Tier 2 (hash): If the mtime changed but the content hash matches, skip reprocessing

This makes re-indexing fast even for large vaults. Use --no-cache to force a full rescan.

Verbose output

With -v, zetl reports scan statistics to stderr: files scanned, files skipped, links found, SPL blocks extracted, and timing.

See also: CLI Reference, architecture/Scanner, architecture/Cache, Stats Command