VERSUS MODE · ROUND 6
Raycast is the launcher that grew an AI. It can chat about your files, through a model in the cloud. Shlexball is an AI that does one thing: find the document you describe, without it leaving your Mac.
25 September 2026 · 5 minute read
Raycast is a launcher, clipboard, window manager and extension store in one hotkey, and its file search is quick at names. Shlexball is a document finder. You describe the file the way you remember it and a language model running on your Mac works out what to look for. If you know the name, use Raycast. If you only remember what the file was about, ask Shlexball.
Raycast’s File Search keeps its own index of your home folder and Applications, stored on your Mac, and matches on file names. It skips noise such as node_modules and respects .gitignore, which makes name search fast and clean.
Content search is an option you switch on, and it asks the macOS Spotlight index for files that contain your words. That is the same question round 1 put to Spotlight, with the same result: the words have to be in the file.
Raycast AI comes with the paid Pro plans. Its @file-search and @finder AI extensions let you ask in AI Chat for “the PDF I downloaded last week”. The chat model turns your request into a file search and reads back the results. By default that model runs in the cloud, so your request, and the file names and details it gets back, go to an AI provider.
Raycast can also use local models through Ollama, which you install and run yourself. Raycast’s own manual calls AI extensions with local models experimental and somewhat unreliable, because Ollama does not yet support the tool calls they depend on.
Shlexball’s model was trained for one job: turning a description into a file search on a Mac. It reads the request, widens it by meaning and ranks the results by fit. Each card previews the passage that matched, and Search details shows the exact read-only command Shlexball ran.
Shlexball’s model is downloaded once and runs on your Mac’s Apple silicon, with nothing else to install. Your documents are read on your Mac and stay there, searches work offline after setup, and Shlexball only reads: it never changes, moves or deletes a file.
| Raycast | Shlexball | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Launcher, clipboard, windows, snippets, extensions, AI chat | Document finder with a local AI model |
| How it matches files | Names in its own index; words through Spotlight | Meaning, via a local language model |
| Plain-English requests | Through AI Chat on a Pro plan | Every search |
| Where the AI runs | Cloud by default; local through Ollama, experimental for file search | On your Mac, built in |
| Previews the matching passage | No: Quick Look of the whole file | Yes, on every card |
| Where it looks | Home folder and Applications, plus folders you add | One folder you choose |
| Speed | Instant for names | A few seconds per search |
| Needs | A recent Mac; also on Windows | macOS 15, Apple silicon, 16 GB memory |
| Price | Free; AI in Pro plans from $10 a month | 30 free searches, then $9 a month or $59 a year |
Raycast does far more than find files: it launches apps, manages windows, keeps your clipboard history, expands snippets and runs thousands of community extensions, and its AI chat answers questions that have nothing to do with your files. Its name search is instant and it runs on Intel Macs and Windows. Keep Raycast for all of that; call Shlexball when you remember what a document said but not what it was called.
Pick a document you can describe but cannot name. Look for it with Raycast, then ask Shlexball. The first 30 searches are free and need no account.
▶ DOWNLOAD SHLEXBALLmacOS 15 or later. Apple silicon. 16 GB memory.