In my searching patterns, I often go with a wide search and then refine it.
In this process, I often use the same “search bits”, like precising the scope, or tags, or …
i’d wish for a way to easily select the recent search bits used and be able to add them to the current search.
I think DT does not have what you want, but I can guess a fast workaround: have a text document with each of those bits in a line, including blanks, keep it open and copy-paste from it into the search box. You could find an editor or viewer that could have “always-on-top” feature or use a clipboard manager like Gladys or similar.
right. I could script that or store those snippets somewhere. My tooling allows for that. I still wish for it in DT. 
Thanks for the suggestion! So basically you’d like to add recent search term (see popup of toolbar search field) to the current one?
yes, part of it. an example:
If I recently searched for
sedentarity near brain tags!=cognition scope:MyDB
I’d like a section of the popup of toolbar search field to propose the bits in it that I could add to a newly started search for walking:
+ near brain
+ tags!=cognition
+ scope:MyDB
The idea is to empower search refinement.
Now another similar idea would be to allow DT user to define such search bits in their preferences. I could also see a benefit of defining permanent (and often) complex bits as:
+scope:MyFavoriteDB
+tags!=
Hope that clarifies.
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Thanks for the clarification! No such plans yet but noted.
A native workaround for permanent “bits” is the Text Replacements... in System Settings > Keyboard.
I have a number of replacement “codes” starting with vv (any other rarely used character combination is equally good) that help me enter text snippets and certain unicode characters quickly.
For example, you can replace vvcog with tags!=cognition and uupol with tag=politics and so on.
That was my suggestion as well. In fact, I have used this for search prefix replacements, e.g., ::t —> tags:.
s: instead of scope: is sufficient to avoid some typing, by the way.
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Indeed! 