buddyboss/search-community searches several parts of the community for one term and returns the matches grouped by kind.
It always reports which kinds were actually searched and which were skipped, so a thin result set is never mistaken for a thorough one.
At a glance
| Ability | buddyboss/search-community |
| Toolset | BuddyBoss — toolset/buddyboss |
| Group | BuddyBoss › Orientation & Reporting |
| Requires | AcrossAI Pro, plus BuddyBoss Platform active on the site |
| Capability | manage_options |
| Safety | Writes data |
| Repeatable | Idempotent — running it twice leaves the same result |
| Ships in | AcrossAI Pro 0.9.16 and later |
Fanned out, not unified
BuddyBoss’s own Network Search feature has no REST endpoint. So this fans the term out across each component’s own list route rather than querying a unified index.
The consequence is that results are ranked within each kind and not against each other. A perfect match in a group name and a weak match in an activity post come back as the best result in their respective lists, with nothing saying which is better.
The skipped-kinds report is the other half and matters more. A component that is switched off cannot be searched, and without saying so a search across a site with groups disabled would return no groups — indistinguishable from a site where nothing matched.
So a result here is always accompanied by its own scope. Three matches out of four kinds searched is a different answer from three matches out of eight.
Idempotent and read-only in effect, though it is not annotated read-only because it touches several component routes.
Input
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
search | string | Yes | The term to search for. |
kinds | array | No | Restrict to these kinds. |
per_page | integer | No | Results per kind. |
What comes back
| Name | Type | What it is |
|---|---|---|
results | object | Matches grouped by kind. |
searched | array | Which kinds were searched. |
skipped | array | Which were skipped, and why. |
success | boolean | Whether the call completed. |
message | string | A one-line summary of what happened, suitable for showing a human. |
error_code | string | Present only on failure — a stable machine-readable reason, such as a missing field, a wrong field type or an unmet confirmation. |
Example
Ask your assistant:
Find everything mentioning “onboarding” in the community.
It resolves to one call:
{
"ability": "buddyboss/search-community",
"parameters": {
"search": "onboarding"
}
}Worth knowing
- Results are ranked within each kind, not across them.
- The skipped list is what makes a thin result interpretable.
- A switched-off component cannot be searched.
- No unified index exists — BuddyBoss does not expose one.
Related abilities
- BuddyBoss Get Community Overview — which components can be searched
- BuddyBoss List Activity — search one kind properly
Get the plugins:
AcrossAI Abilities Manager · AcrossAI MCP Manager
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