# Search

A **search** is one literature query over the corpus, run at a chosen depth. It produces an
Answer and the ranked papers that answer is grounded in.

## Lifecycle

Async. `POST /v1/searches` returns `202` with `status: queued`; poll, subscribe to a
webhook, or use the SDK's `.wait()`. Terminal states: `succeeded`, `failed`, `canceled`.

## Shape

```json
{ "object": "search", "id": "srch_9dm2pq4x1a", "status": "succeeded", "depth": "standard",
  "query": "How does climate change affect biodiversity?", "answer": { "…": "…" },
  "paper_count": 20, "credits_cost": 0, "created_at": "…", "completed_at": "…" }
```

## Depth changes the shape of the work

`standard` scans fewer papers and returns faster; `deep_review` runs an agentic pass across more
papers and takes materially longer. Cost and latency both scale. See depth.

## Not to be confused with

**Chat** — *search finds papers and answers across the corpus; chat answers questions about a
fixed set of documents you name.* If the caller already knows which PDFs matter, they want a chat.
**Topic** — *search returns papers; topics return the ideas those papers are about.*

## Related

searches · answer · depth · papers