diff --git a/internal/lsp/fuzzy/symbol.go b/internal/lsp/fuzzy/symbol.go
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..062f491
--- /dev/null
+++ b/internal/lsp/fuzzy/symbol.go
@@ -0,0 +1,224 @@
+// Copyright 2021 The Go Authors. All rights reserved.
+// Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
+// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
+
+package fuzzy
+
+import (
+	"unicode"
+)
+
+// SymbolMatcher implements a fuzzy matching algorithm optimized for Go symbols
+// of the form:
+//  example.com/path/to/package.object.field
+//
+// Knowing that we are matching symbols like this allows us to make the
+// following optimizations:
+//  - We can incorporate right-to-left relevance directly into the score
+//    calculation.
+//  - We can match from right to left, discarding leading bytes if the input is
+//    too long.
+//  - We just take the right-most match without losing too much precision. This
+//    allows us to use an O(n) algorithm.
+//  - We can operate directly on chunked strings; in many cases we will
+//    be storing the package path and/or package name separately from the
+//    symbol or identifiers, so doing this avoids allocating strings.
+//  - We can return the index of the right-most match, allowing us to trim
+//    irrelevant qualification.
+//
+// This implementation is experimental, serving as a reference fast algorithm
+// to compare to the fuzzy algorithm implemented by Matcher.
+type SymbolMatcher struct {
+	// Using buffers of length 256 is both a reasonable size for most qualified
+	// symbols, and makes it easy to avoid bounds checks by using uint8 indexes.
+	pattern     [256]rune
+	patternLen  uint8
+	inputBuffer [256]rune   // avoid allocating when considering chunks
+	roles       [256]uint32 // which roles does a rune play (word start, etc.)
+	segments    [256]uint8  // how many segments from the right is each rune
+}
+
+const (
+	segmentStart uint32 = 1 << iota
+	wordStart
+	separator
+)
+
+// NewSymbolMatcher creates a SymbolMatcher that may be used to match the given
+// search pattern.
+//
+// Currently this matcher only accepts case-insensitive fuzzy patterns.
+//
+// TODO(rfindley):
+//  - implement smart-casing
+//  - implement space-separated groups
+//  - implement ', ^, and $ modifiers
+//
+// An empty pattern matches no input.
+func NewSymbolMatcher(pattern string) *SymbolMatcher {
+	m := &SymbolMatcher{}
+	for _, p := range pattern {
+		m.pattern[m.patternLen] = unicode.ToLower(p)
+		m.patternLen++
+		if m.patternLen == 255 || int(m.patternLen) == len(pattern) {
+			// break at 255 so that we can represent patternLen with a uint8.
+			break
+		}
+	}
+	return m
+}
+
+// Match looks for the right-most match of the search pattern within the symbol
+// represented by concatenating the given chunks, returning its offset and
+// score.
+//
+// If a match is found, the first return value will hold the absolute byte
+// offset within all chunks for the start of the symbol. In other words, the
+// index of the match within strings.Join(chunks, ""). If no match is found,
+// the first return value will be -1.
+//
+// The second return value will be the score of the match, which is always
+// between 0 and 1, inclusive. A score of 0 indicates no match.
+func (m *SymbolMatcher) Match(chunks []string) (int, float64) {
+	// Explicit behavior for an empty pattern.
+	//
+	// As a minor optimization, this also avoids nilness checks later on, since
+	// the compiler can prove that m != nil.
+	if m.patternLen == 0 {
+		return -1, 0
+	}
+
+	// First phase: populate the input buffer with lower-cased runes.
+	//
+	// We could also check for a forward match here, but since we'd have to write
+	// the entire input anyway this has negligible impact on performance.
+
+	var (
+		inputLen  = uint8(0)
+		modifiers = wordStart | segmentStart
+	)
+
+input:
+	for _, chunk := range chunks {
+		for _, r := range chunk {
+			if r == '.' || r == '/' {
+				modifiers |= separator
+			}
+			// optimization: avoid calls to unicode.ToLower, which can't be inlined.
+			l := r
+			if r <= unicode.MaxASCII {
+				if 'A' <= r && r <= 'Z' {
+					l = r + 'a' - 'A'
+				}
+			} else {
+				l = unicode.ToLower(r)
+			}
+			if l != r {
+				modifiers |= wordStart
+			}
+			m.inputBuffer[inputLen] = l
+			m.roles[inputLen] = modifiers
+			inputLen++
+			if m.roles[inputLen-1]&separator != 0 {
+				modifiers = wordStart | segmentStart
+			} else {
+				modifiers = 0
+			}
+			// TODO: we should prefer the right-most input if it overflows, rather
+			//       than the left-most as we're doing here.
+			if inputLen == 255 {
+				break input
+			}
+		}
+	}
+
+	// Second phase: find the right-most match, and count segments from the
+	// right.
+
+	var (
+		pi    = uint8(m.patternLen - 1) // pattern index
+		p     = m.pattern[pi]           // pattern rune
+		start = -1                      // start offset of match
+		rseg  = uint8(0)
+	)
+	const maxSeg = 3 // maximum number of segments from the right to count, for scoring purposes.
+
+	for ii := inputLen - 1; ; ii-- {
+		r := m.inputBuffer[ii]
+		if rseg < maxSeg && m.roles[ii]&separator != 0 {
+			rseg++
+		}
+		m.segments[ii] = rseg
+		if p == r {
+			if pi == 0 {
+				start = int(ii)
+				break
+			}
+			pi--
+			p = m.pattern[pi]
+		}
+		// Don't check ii >= 0 in the loop condition: ii is a uint8.
+		if ii == 0 {
+			break
+		}
+	}
+
+	if start < 0 {
+		// no match: skip scoring
+		return -1, 0
+	}
+
+	// Third phase: find the shortest match, and compute the score.
+
+	// Score is the average score for each character.
+	//
+	// A character score is the multiple of:
+	//   1. 1.0 if the character starts a segment, .8 if the character start a
+	//      mid-segment word, otherwise 0.6. This carries over to immediately
+	//      following characters.
+	//   2. 1.0 if the character is part of the last segment, otherwise
+	//      1.0-.2*<segments from the right>, with a max segment count of 3.
+	//
+	// This is a very naive algorithm, but it is fast. There's lots of prior art
+	// here, and we should leverage it. For example, we could explicitly consider
+	// character distance, and exact matches of words or segments.
+	//
+	// Also note that this might not actually find the highest scoring match, as
+	// doing so could require a non-linear algorithm, depending on how the score
+	// is calculated.
+
+	pi = 0
+	p = m.pattern[pi]
+
+	const (
+		segStreak  = 1.0
+		wordStreak = 0.8
+		noStreak   = 0.6
+		perSegment = 0.2 // we count at most 3 segments above
+	)
+
+	streakBonus := noStreak
+	totScore := 0.0
+	for ii := uint8(start); ii < inputLen; ii++ {
+		r := m.inputBuffer[ii]
+		if r == p {
+			pi++
+			p = m.pattern[pi]
+			// Note: this could be optimized with some bit operations.
+			switch {
+			case m.roles[ii]&segmentStart != 0 && segStreak > streakBonus:
+				streakBonus = segStreak
+			case m.roles[ii]&wordStart != 0 && wordStreak > streakBonus:
+				streakBonus = wordStreak
+			}
+			totScore += streakBonus * (1.0 - float64(m.segments[ii])*perSegment)
+			if pi >= m.patternLen {
+				break
+			}
+		} else {
+			streakBonus = noStreak
+		}
+	}
+
+	return start, totScore / float64(m.patternLen)
+}
diff --git a/internal/lsp/fuzzy/symbol_test.go b/internal/lsp/fuzzy/symbol_test.go
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9dc710e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/internal/lsp/fuzzy/symbol_test.go
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+// Copyright 2021 The Go Authors. All rights reserved.
+// Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
+// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
+
+package fuzzy_test
+
+import (
+	"testing"
+
+	. "golang.org/x/tools/internal/lsp/fuzzy"
+)
+
+func TestSymbolMatchIndex(t *testing.T) {
+	tests := []struct {
+		pattern, input string
+		want           int
+	}{
+		{"test", "foo.TestFoo", 4},
+		{"test", "test", 0},
+		{"test", "Test", 0},
+		{"test", "est", -1},
+		{"t", "shortest", 7},
+		{"", "foo", -1},
+		{"", string([]rune{0}), -1}, // verify that we don't default to an empty pattern.
+		{"anything", "", -1},
+	}
+
+	for _, test := range tests {
+		matcher := NewSymbolMatcher(test.pattern)
+		if got, _ := matcher.Match([]string{test.input}); got != test.want {
+			t.Errorf("NewSymbolMatcher(%q).Match(%q) = %v, _, want %v, _", test.pattern, test.input, got, test.want)
+		}
+	}
+}
+
+func TestSymbolRanking(t *testing.T) {
+	matcher := NewSymbolMatcher("test")
+
+	// symbols to match, in ascending order of ranking.
+	symbols := []string{
+		"this.is.better.than.most",
+		"test.foo.bar",
+		"atest",
+		"thebest",
+		"test.foo",
+		"tTest",
+		"test.foo",
+		"foo.test",
+		"test",
+	}
+	prev := 0.0
+	for _, sym := range symbols {
+		_, score := matcher.Match([]string{sym})
+		t.Logf("Match(%q) = %v", sym, score)
+		if score < prev {
+			t.Errorf("Match(%q) = _, %v, want > %v", sym, score, prev)
+		}
+		prev = score
+	}
+}
+
+func TestChunkedMatch(t *testing.T) {
+	matcher := NewSymbolMatcher("test")
+
+	chunked := [][]string{
+		{"test"},
+		{"", "test"},
+		{"test", ""},
+		{"te", "st"},
+	}
+
+	for _, chunks := range chunked {
+		offset, score := matcher.Match(chunks)
+		if offset != 0 || score != 1.0 {
+			t.Errorf("Match(%v) = %v, %v, want 0, 1.0", chunks, offset, score)
+		}
+	}
+}