Mindex is a desktop app for Markdown knowledge bases, driven by the assistant you already pay for. These pages cover what it does, where it puts things, and how to make it do what you want.
Install it, connect an assistant, open your first vault.
A desktop app for Markdown knowledge bases, driven by the assistant CLI you already pay for.
Download a build for macOS, Windows or Linux, or build from source.
Mindex drives Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI on your own subscription. Install one, sign in, and the chat works.
Open a folder, or make a new one. Everything after that is files.
What the pieces are and how they fit together.
A vault is the folder Mindex reads and writes. The filesystem is the source of truth; everything else is derived.
A note is one Markdown file with optional YAML frontmatter. That is the whole format.
A WYSIWYG surface and the raw Markdown, both writing to the same file.
Types are lenses, not schemas. They change what you see, never what you may write.
Wiki links that work both ways, and a map of everything you have written.
One context file per folder, rewritten in the background as the folder changes.
Ask a question, decide how far it may reach, and choose where the answer lands.
What Mindex tells your assistant about the vault, written as a file the CLI reads natively.
Commit, push and browse history without leaving the app. It is ordinary Git on an ordinary repository.
A local version on every write, kept whether or not you use Git.
Notes about a passage, anchored to the words rather than to a position.
One task at a time, start to finish.
Rich mode, raw mode, and moving between them without thinking about it.
Select any text, ask for a rewrite, and read it in place before deciding.
Set the scope to a folder and ask a question about everything in it.
Connect notes with double brackets, in the body or in frontmatter.
Define the fields a kind of note has, and where new ones go.
Make the tree readable at a glance instead of line by line.
Ask for the result as a Word, Excel, PDF or Markdown file, written into the vault.
Use Git from inside Mindex, on a repository that is ordinary in every way.
One shortcut for finding a note and for running a command.
Formats, fields, shortcuts and settings, to look up.
What Mindex runs on, and what it needs from the machine.
Everything Mindex writes, and where.
The YAML block at the top of a note, and what Mindex reads from it.
Every binding Mindex answers to, on both platforms.
Every settings panel and what lives in it.
Clone, install, run. And what a clone build does not include.
When something does not work.
The chat cannot find a CLI to run. Usually it is not installed, not signed in, or not on the PATH.
Builds are not yet signed with an Apple certificate. What the warning means and how to get past it.
Almost always a moved folder, a permission, or a cache that can be thrown away.
Pushing fails. Mindex uses the credentials your machine already has, so the fix is usually outside the app.