← Grimoire
Source on GitHub Docs

Getting started

Grimoire is a local-first desktop notes app (source).

Notes, settings, and full-text search live in SQLite under the OS app data directory for bundle id com.grimoire.app. Vector indexes live in LanceDB beside that database. The assistant talks to Ollama on your machine (http://localhost:11434). There is no vendor-hosted LLM for that path.

In product language, vault means your encrypted note corpus / lock scope — not a folder you pick at setup. Details: Vault & data.

Install

Preferred: download a packaged installer from Download (Windows, macOS, and Linux for current releases such as v1.0.0). Builds may be unsigned / not notarized — see the Download page for Gatekeeper and SmartScreen notes.

Also see Installers & uninstall for per-OS trust warnings, where app data lives, and uninstall behaviour.

From source (secondary):

Native prerequisites (libzim, WebKitGTK, vcpkg on Windows, and so on) are documented in the app repo — do not assume npm install && npm run tauri dev alone is enough on every platform:

git clone https://github.com/3ravens/Grimoire.git
cd Grimoire
npm install
npm run tauri dev

You need Node.js, Rust, and the Tauri prerequisites for your OS, plus the native deps above.

See Development for tests and optional tooling.

First launch

There is no “pick a vault folder” step. On first run the app creates its data under the com.grimoire.app app data directory and you can start writing.

If you upgraded from a preview build that used another bundle id, Grimoire may copy the database and vector index into com.grimoire.app and show a short migration banner — see Vault & data.

First note walkthrough

  1. Create a note — Press Ctrl+N (⌘N on macOS) or use New note. A new tab opens in the editor.
  2. Title — Set the note title in the header field (shown in lists and the Quick Switcher).
  3. Write something — Add a short body in Markdown (for example a heading and a bullet list). You can use #tags and [[wiki-links]].
  4. Save — Press Ctrl+S. Grimoire writes the note to SQLite, then updates search and embeddings so Ctrl+F and the assistant’s Use notes retrieval see what you just saved. On a very large note the toolbar may show Indexing… while embeddings finish.
  5. Find it again — In the folder sidebar, locate the folder where the note was created (often Unfiled). Click the note to reopen it.
  6. Search — Press Ctrl+F, type a distinctive word from the body, and open the hit. See Search.

Optional: press Ctrl+P to open the Quick Switcher and jump back by title substring.

For every major surface (tabs, graph, calendar, and so on), see Views & surfaces.

First LLM interaction walkthrough

Grimoire never sends chat to a hosted Grimoire cloud — it talks to Ollama on localhost. Complete Install and ensure Ollama is installed.

  1. Hardware gate (if shown) — Open Settings → Hardware. If the app rates your machine as embedding-only or insufficient but you still want chat, read the copy and consider Force enable LLM features (optional, may be slow). Otherwise, proceed when capability shows Full LLM support.
  2. Models — Open Settings → LLM. Pick a chat model you have pulled in Ollama (ollama pull <model>). Confirm the embedding model exists too — semantic search and RAG need it. See AI assistant.
  3. Start Ollama — Run ollama serve if your setup does not already keep Ollama running as a service.
  4. Open chat — Open the Chat / assistant panel from the main shell (see Views — Chat).
  5. Send a message — Type a short question and press Enter. You should see streaming tokens as the model responds. If you are asking about a note you just wrote, save it first so the latest version is indexed for Use notes.
  6. Context toggles (one line each) — In the chat toolbar, Use notes pulls vault content via RAG; Use Wikipedia needs Wikipedia installed and enabled in Settings; Use files includes File Scanner paths; Use view sends a snapshot of the current board/table view; Feature guide injects the same markdown cheat sheet bundled in the app (AI assistant — Context toggles).

If something fails, start with Troubleshooting and the Common errors table.

Optional: Ollama details

  1. Install Ollama and ensure it is serving (e.g. ollama serve if you run it manually).

  2. Pull at least one chat model and ensure the embedding model configured in Settings exists. Defaults are defined in app settings / Rust AppConfig. The codebase uses http://localhost:11434 for /api/chat, /api/embeddings, and related endpoints.

If Ollama is down, the UI surfaces errors such as OllamaUnavailable and EmbeddingFailed, with hints to run ollama serve or ollama pull <model>.

Wikipedia and network (optional)

When Wikipedia-related features are enabled, the app may use the network for bundles or catalogues.

Core note editing and local Ollama chat do not require that.

Details stay in app Settings and the upstream README sections on benchmarking. See Development and Settings — Wikipedia.

Next steps

For a short FAQ, see grimoireapp.dev/help/.