# ADR-0011: Symbol Search Index — issuer CIK via SEC seed, hybrid add-resolve

Symbols lacked issuer identity and the app's only autocomplete corpus was the demand set
(already-tracked symbols), making new-symbol discovery impossible. We decided: the `symbols`
table gains an issuer CIK column, seeded from the SEC's `company_tickers.json` bulk file
(~12k US tickers, overwritten in place daily) via a scheduled queue job; autocomplete resolves
local-first against this table; adding an unmatched string is a soft-block ("not in the SEC
registry — add anyway?") followed by background hydration through the existing adapter queue;
and the symbol page surfaces a two-tier "who holds this" strip (tracked funds with weight, then
institution count). A symbol carries TWO CIK roles in this app — the issuer CIK (the company the
ticker represents, on `symbols`) and the filer CIK (the fund that files 13Fs, on `tracked_funds`)
— same identifier space, different edges.

**Status:** accepted (2026-07-28, grilling session).

**Considered Options**
- Live yfinance search suggestions on keystroke — rejected: violates ADR-0009 (no live vendor call on the request path); rate limits make autocomplete unreliable.
- Curated universe seed (S&P 500 / NASDAQ 100) — rejected: narrow, and carries no issuer CIKs.
- Strict resolve (block unknown symbols) — rejected: users need fresh/post-file-update tickers; strictness is a question, not a wall.
- Loose add (no confirmation) — rejected: silently accepting typos/delisted names pollutes the "known database" the autocomplete relies on.
- Full-row upsert on daily seed — rejected: would clobber yfinance-hydrated `ticker_kind` (gates module applicability), `sector`, `industry`, `peers`; merge policy is column-scoped instead.

**Consequences**
- Two ownership domains on `symbols`: SEC fills issuer identity (cik, name, exchange); yfinance hydration owns classification (ticker_kind, sector, industry, peers). No overwrite war.
- Non-SEC rows (crypto, some ETFs, indexes) are never purged — the SEC universe is a subset, not the whole.
- The daily seed makes the local index essentially complete for US equities, so live-search fallback is rarely needed.
- Autocomplete correctness now depends on the scheduled materializer running; a missed day only delays new tickers by one day (stale-while-revalidate).