PowerSearch typeahead: label-only matching vs key — intentional? #3921

Observation

usePowerSearchSource matches user typeahead queries against field.label and (via consumer-supplied) field.typeaheadAliases, not against field.key. Same for operators — matched by op.label, never by op.key.

Concretely, in packages/core/src/PowerSearch/usePowerSearchSource.ts:

const fieldMatches =
 field.label.toLowerCase().includes(lower) ||
 field.typeaheadAliases?.some(alias =>
 alias.toLowerCase().includes(lower),
 );

The intuition, and the uncertainty

Intuition: key is the source of truth (stable identifier, consumer-chosen, doesn't change with locale) and label is derived (display string, potentially translated). It's a little surprising that search compares against the derived string only.

But typeaheadAliases already exists as a hook for "additional strings that should match this field." I don't know the history here — maybe that's the intended escape hatch, and consumers who want key-based matching are expected to put their key in there. Or maybe typeaheadAliases was designed for something entirely different (synonyms, user-friendly shortcuts, etc.).

Rather than propose a fix, I wanted to raise the shape here and see if anyone with context can chime in on whether this is intentional, what typeaheadAliases was actually designed for, and whether there's a real gap or not.

Surfaced during the PowerSearch i18n migration follow-up to #3765. The i18n work itself doesn't depend on this — flagging it separately.