Quoth David Bremner on Jul 12 at  4:31 pm:
> David Edmondson <dme@dme.org> writes:
> 
> > Extended the saved search definition to allow the inclusion of an
> > accelerator key for the search. Bind 'j' in the common mode map as a
> > leader for such accelerator keys.
> 
> I was trying this out without configuring any accelerators and it seemed
> a bit unfriendly. After hitting 'j' I more or less get stuck until I hit
> C-g. Even hitting ? did not produce any output. I think at minimum the
> user who hits j by mistake should not get stuck in a state she needs to
> C-g out of.

Have you tried notmuch-go?

  https://github.com/aclements/notmuch/blob/go-hack/emacs/notmuch-go.el

Once you load it, it's bound to 'g' everywhere.  It shows all of the
available bindings/searches above the minibuffer as soon as you hit
'g'.  I've been using notmuch-go happily for months (it's completely
supplanted hello for me).

The right answer might be something between notmuch-go and dme's
patch.  Currently notmuch-go uses a hard-coded set of searches, while
dme's patch derives them from the saved searches.  notmuch-go may also
be more complicated than necessary; I had originally intended to do
some other things with it that never materialized and, now that I've
used it, I don't think they're necessary.