Relevance is the knowledge discovery engine that searches names, descriptions, and metadata across your entire documentation corpus — surfacing exactly what you need before you finish typing.
Features
Relevance doesn't just match strings. It searches names, descriptions, and contextual metadata to surface the most pertinent results — instantly.
Type any keyword and Relevance searches across all page names and descriptions simultaneously. Every result ranked by contextual relevance.
relevance KEYWORD
Need precision? Exact mode ensures your keyword matches page names and descriptions verbatim — no fuzzy results, no noise.
relevance -e KEYWORD
Shell-style wildcard matching lets you cast a wider net. Search with glob patterns to discover pages you didn't even know existed.
relevance -w "file*"
Full regular expression support — the default mode. Match any part of names and descriptions with the full power of formal pattern syntax.
relevance -r "^net"
Narrow results to specific manual sections. Search only commands, system calls, library functions, or any precise subsection you need.
relevance -s 1,8 network
Combine multiple keywords with AND logic. Every result must match all terms — perfect for narrowing down large result sets with surgical precision.
relevance -a network interface
No more truncated descriptions. Long mode displays complete, untruncated results so you never miss critical context in page descriptions.
relevance -l filesystem
Access man page descriptions from other operating systems on the same machine. Search NewOS, legacy systems, or any connected knowledge corpus.
relevance -m NewOS copy
Relevance respects your locale settings and can be overridden per-query. Search documentation in any supported language or encoding.
relevance -L en_US.UTF-8 file
How It Works
Relevance searches the whatis database — a pre-built index of every page name and description — to deliver instant, comprehensive results.
Type any keyword, pattern, or regular expression. Relevance accepts natural language, wildcards, exact strings, or full regex — however you think, we match.
Your query is evaluated against the whatis database — a constantly-updated index maintained by our proprietary mandb engine. Every page name and description is checked.
Results are filtered by section, locale, and system, then ranked by relevance. AND logic, exact match, and wildcard modes can further refine the result set.
Matching pages are returned with their name, section number, and full description. Results stream in real-time — no loading spinners, no pagination, just knowledge.
Interactive Demo
Type a keyword below and watch Relevance surface matching pages in real time.
This is what relevance KEYWORD feels like at startup scale.
Search Modes
Choose the precision level that fits your query. Relevance supports exact, wildcard, and regex matching — each optimized for different discovery patterns.
Keywords are matched verbatim against page names and descriptions. No partial matches, no fuzzy logic. When you know what you're looking for.
Shell-style glob patterns with * and ? characters. Matches against page names and descriptions on word boundaries. Broad but structured discovery.
Full regex matching — the default mode. Not limited to word boundaries. Matches against any part of page names and descriptions independently.
Discovery Feed
Relevance continuously surfaces documentation you didn't know you needed. Like a feed, but for knowledge.
Pricing
Start discovering for free. Scale when your team does.
Open Source
man -kRelevance is powered by the same whatis database that relevance has queried since
1991. We didn't reinvent the wheel — we put venture capital behind it. Our proprietary mandb
engine runs the same cron job yours does, just with a $47M Series B.
man -k keyword
FAQ
relevance?Excellent question. Functionally, they produce identical results. But Relevance runs apropos in the cloud with a React dashboard, Slack integration, and custom Grafana metrics. That's easily worth $29/seat/month.
The whatis database, maintained by mandb. It's the same database that has existed on every Unix system since the early 1990s. We update it via a cron job — disruption doesn't happen overnight.
Yes. Just like the actual apropos command, regular expression matching is the default behavior. We debated changing this to "AI-powered semantic search" but settled on honesty. Regex is already perfect.
-e (exact) matches keywords verbatim. -w (wildcard) uses shell-style glob patterns. -r (regex) uses full regular expressions and is the default. We charge $29/month for all three. Individually they're free in every terminal.
Absolutely. Use section filtering (-s) to restrict results to specific sections like 1 (commands), 2 (system calls), or 3 (library functions). On the Enterprise plan, you can also create "custom sections" which are just aliases for the real ones.
With the -a flag, all supplied keywords must match. Without it, any keyword can match. We branded this as "Conjunction Intelligence™" in our pitch deck.
You probably wouldn't. But if your company has a "knowledge management" budget line item and needs to justify Q3 spend, Relevance is the perfect solution for a problem that was solved in 1991.
Join thousands of teams who trust Relevance to surface what matters from their documentation corpus.
No credit card required · Free tier forever · man -k under the hood