Knowledge Base

Knowledge Base

Route: /knowledge · Sidebar: Knowledge Base · ⌘K: "Knowledge Base" / "Search knowledge base"

Your notes, as plain markdown files on disk — not a proprietary database. Files live at knowledge-base/<category>/<file>.md in your data directory, so you can edit, grep, version, and back them up with any tool. Compass watches the folder and re-indexes automatically when you edit files externally.

The editor

• TipTap rich-text editor over markdown. Select a file from the list to edit it; the empty state reads "Select a file to start editing."
• Auto-save with debounce — your changes persist as you type.
• Files are organized by category folders (e.g. profile/, calendar/, inbox/, work/, drive/).

Wikilinks & backlinks

• Type [[Note Title]] to link between notes, Obsidian-style.
• Each note shows its backlinks — every other note that links to it — so you can navigate the graph in both directions (knowledge:get-backlinks).

Search

Two complementary modes:

• Full-text search — fast keyword search across note bodies.
• Semantic search — local-embedding similarity ("find notes about X" even without the exact words). Embeddings are computed locally and stored at .data/knowledge-embeddings.json; there's no cloud call. You can rebuild the index from Settings if it drifts.

Global ⌘K search also reaches into note bodies — see Search & Command Palette.

Auto-updated notes & the diff view

Some notes are maintained by Compass, regenerated after each sync — e.g. calendar/upcoming.md, inbox/action-items.md, work/github-summary.md, and the profile/finances*.md summaries. Each carries a header like > Auto-updated by Compass — <timestamp>.

Before overwriting an auto-updated file, Compass saves a .prev snapshot. The editor toolbar then shows a diff (GitCompare) button comparing the current file to its previous version. If there's no .prev, there's nothing to compare and the button doesn't appear (empty state: "No changes detected."). See docs/knowledge-extractor.md.

Suggestions

Compass can surface suggested edits (e.g. extracted people, dates, action items) as interactive checkboxes you accept or dismiss. The baseline is regex extraction (always on); optional Ollama enrichment runs locally only (default http://localhost:11434) and never makes outbound calls.

Where it lives

What	Where	Encrypted
Note files	knowledge-base/<category>/*.md	No (plain markdown — you own them)
File index	knowledge_files table in .data/compass.db	No
Embeddings	.data/knowledge-embeddings.json	No
.prev snapshots	next to each auto-updated file	No

Notes are not secrets. For passwords, account numbers, and sensitive identity/medical/legal data, use the encrypted Vault instead.

Related

• Ask Compass — a RAG assistant that answers questions grounded in these notes.
• Integrations — what populates the auto-updated notes.