Reducing the gap between panels ... Create a new Card1 Layout Variant (in Designer) with a height to match your desired / declared height in the CreateList sub.
Or change
Panel1 vertical anchor to Top only
Then you only have the
Divider Height property to deal with.
Regarding a Search option ... One way could be ... At CLV Load time, adding Card Title/Description and clvCard index to a list as an array... then on search you would interate through the list to access the index/s of matching cards and displaying/ scrolling/ offering to user.
You would have to update this list when adding new / removing cards.
also noted in your example ..
Dim height As Int = 200dip
If GetDeviceLayoutValues.ApproximateScreenSize < 4.5 Then height = 200dip
the second line is achieving nothing .. and unless you are allowing for smaller screen size , should just be removed.
The original example adds an extra 30dip ?