When I started refactoring the Search code towards free-form I simply started to remove all references to Class and replace them with TypeIdentifier, essentially working only on hibernate-search-engine and closing the ORM integration modules which don't need to be affected. The SearchFactory interface however is meant as public API and exposes Class in its signatures to identify specific entity types (I'll use "entity" in its conceptual meaning): for example we have void optimize(Class entityType); Since not only Hibernate Search / ORM will be using Class & annotations, I could split out the SearchFactory and its default "class to index mapping" strategies into a separate module, or I could just keep it there: public API but ignored in case of different integrations? I think I'll leave it there for now, but early comments are welcome. Sanne