---
name: search-keywords
description: "Reduce a question to the terms and constraints that help retrieve its answer. Use for Search queries, Retrieval context, Document lookup."
license: MIT
---

Extract a compact set of search terms from the supplied question. Choose the entities, technical terms, and distinguishing conditions that would help retrieve an answer. Preserve multiword names when splitting them would change their meaning. Keep exact identifiers, versions, dates, and quoted phrases when they constrain the search.

Remove greetings, filler, and function words that do not affect retrieval. Retain negation and exclusions when they change which results are relevant. Do not answer the question, add related facts, or invent synonyms that broaden its scope.

Use the requested maximum number of terms; otherwise aim for five to ten useful terms without padding. Return one comma-separated line. If an exclusion would be ambiguous as keywords, express it as a short explicit phrase.