Getting Started

Welcome to m-notes

m-notes is an AI toolkit for managing context and workflow. It combines a fast markdown editor with powerful features like wikilinks, full-text and semantic search, a knowledge graph, and native AI integration via the mnotes CLI — so your AI assistants can read, search, and write to your knowledge base directly.

Creating your first note

1. Click the + button in the sidebar or press Cmd+N (Ctrl+N on Windows/Linux)
2. A new untitled note opens in the editor — start typing in markdown
3. Click the note title at the top to rename it, or edit the first heading in the content
4. Notes are saved automatically as you type. You can also save manually with Cmd+S

The editor supports three modes: Editor (write markdown), Preview (rendered output), and Split (side-by-side). Toggle between them using the buttons in the toolbar.

Organizing with folders

Folders let you group related notes together in a hierarchy.

• Right-click in the sidebar to create a new folder, or use the folder icon at the top
• Drag and drop notes between folders to reorganize them
• Folders can be nested — right-click a folder to add a sub-folder
• Click a folder to expand or collapse it and see its contents

Using tags and frontmatter

Tags provide a flexible way to categorize notes across folders. m-notes uses YAML frontmatter at the top of your notes to store metadata including tags.

---
tags:
  - javascript
  - architecture
  - decision
type: memory
---

# My Note Content

The rest of your note goes here...

• Tags are defined in the tags field as a YAML list
• You can also set type to categorize notes (e.g., note, memory, spec, plan)
• Search by tag using the search bar or filter notes by clicking a tag in the sidebar

Wikilinks

Connect your notes together using wikilinks — a double-bracket syntax that creates clickable links between notes.

• Type [[Note Title]] anywhere in your note to link to another note by its title
• Links are resolved by matching the title (case-insensitive). If no match exists, clicking the link creates a new note with that title
• View incoming links (backlinks) in the backlinks panel at the bottom of the editor
• Wikilinks also power the graph view, showing how your notes connect to each other

Editor preferences

Customize the editor to match your workflow. Open Settings to adjust:

• Theme — switch between dark, light, or system theme
• Autosave — notes save automatically with a short debounce delay
• Vim mode — enable vim keybindings for modal editing
• Font size — adjust the editor font size to your preference

AI integration

m-notes ships with the mnotes CLI, which connects AI assistants like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex to your notes. Your AI client can read, search, and write to your knowledge base — covering note CRUD, search, knowledge graph traversal, entity extraction, and more.

This means your AI coding assistant can use your notes as a knowledge base — looking up decisions, specs, and context without you having to copy-paste. Changes made by AI agents appear in your UI in real time.

The fastest way to set up is the CLI Connect guide — install @frameworkby/mnotes, run mnotes login, then mnotes connect to auto-configure your AI client.