Follow the flow.

An interactive explanation of a search request, powered by the independent flow-player component. This is a scripted simulation, not a live system or a client case study.

Choose a step, use Next and Previous, or press Play. Playback starts only when you ask it to; reduced-motion preferences keep transitions still.

The trace in words

1. Send a query. The browser sends an example search query to the service.
2. Look up matches. The service asks the index for matching entries.
3. Return matches. The index returns illustrative matches to the service.
4. Show results. The service returns results for the browser to display.

The player is open source under the MIT license: source on GitHub, @hneudev/flow-player on npm and documentation and playground.