Configuration

GNO configuration reference.

Config File

Location varies by platform (see File Locations below). Run gno doctor to see your resolved config path.

version: "1.0"

# FTS tokenizer (set at init, cannot change)
ftsTokenizer: snowball english

# Collections
collections:
  - name: notes
    path: /Users/you/notes
    pattern: "**/*.md"
    include: []
    exclude:
      - .git
      - node_modules
    languageHint: en

  - name: work
    path: /Users/you/work/docs
    pattern: "**/*"
    exclude:
      - dist
      - build

# Contexts (semantic hints)
contexts:
  - scopeType: global
    scopeKey: /
    text: Personal knowledge base and project documentation

  - scopeType: collection
    scopeKey: notes:
    text: Personal notes and journal entries

  - scopeType: prefix
    scopeKey: gno://work/api
    text: API documentation and specifications

# Model configuration
models:
  activePreset: balanced

Collections

Collections define what gets indexed.

Collection Fields

Default Include Extensions

When include is empty (default), only supported document types are indexed:

• .md - Markdown
• .txt - Plain text
• .pdf - PDF documents
• .docx - Word documents
• .pptx - PowerPoint
• .xlsx - Excel spreadsheets

To override the default and index only specific supported types:

include:
  - .md
  - .txt

Note: include controls which files are scanned, but files must still have converter support. Specifying unsupported extensions will result in conversion errors.

Files without extensions (e.g., Makefile, LICENSE) and dotfiles (e.g., .env, .gitignore) are always excluded.

Default Excludes

exclude:
  - .git
  - node_modules
  - .venv
  - .idea
  - dist
  - build
  - __pycache__
  - .DS_Store
  - Thumbs.db

Examples

Markdown notes:

- name: notes
  path: /Users/you/notes
  pattern: "**/*.md"

Code docs with language hint:

- name: german-docs
  path: /Users/you/docs/german
  pattern: "**/*.md"
  languageHint: de

Mixed documentation folder:

- name: project-docs
  path: /Users/you/project/docs
  pattern: "**/*"
  include:
    - .md
    - .txt
  exclude:
    - node_modules
    - dist
    - drafts

Note: Exclude patterns match path components (directory or file names), not globs. Use dist to exclude a dist/ directory, not *.js.

With update command:

- name: wiki
  path: /Users/you/wiki
  updateCmd: "git pull"

Contexts

Contexts add semantic hints to improve search relevance.

Scope Types

Examples

contexts:
  # Global context
  - scopeType: global
    scopeKey: /
    text: Technical knowledge base for software development

  # Collection context
  - scopeType: collection
    scopeKey: notes:
    text: Personal notes and daily journal entries

  # Path prefix context
  - scopeType: prefix
    scopeKey: gno://work/api
    text: REST API documentation and OpenAPI specs

Models

Model configuration for embeddings and AI answers.

Presets

Note: When using GNO standalone with --answer, the quality preset is required for documents containing Markdown tables or other structured content. The smaller models in slim/balanced presets cannot reliably parse tabular data. When GNO is used via MCP, skill, or CLI by AI agents (Claude Code, Codex, etc.), the agent handles answer generation, so any preset works for retrieval.

Model Details

All presets use:

• bge-m3 for embeddings (1024 dimensions, multilingual)
• Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B for reranking (scores best chunk per document)

The reranker’s 32K context window allows scoring complete documents (tables, code, all sections) rather than truncated snippets.

Custom Models

models:
  activePreset: custom
  presets:
    - id: custom
      name: My Custom Setup
      embed: hf:user/model/embed.gguf
      rerank: hf:user/model/rerank.gguf
      gen: hf:user/model/gen.gguf

Model URIs support:

• hf:org/repo/file.gguf - Hugging Face download
• file:/path/to/model.gguf - Local file
• http://host:port/path#modelname - Remote HTTP endpoint (OpenAI-compatible)

HTTP Endpoints

GNO supports remote model servers using OpenAI-compatible APIs. This allows offloading inference to a more powerful machine (e.g., a GPU server on your network).

models:
  activePreset: remote
  presets:
    - id: remote
      name: Remote GPU Server
      embed: "http://192.168.1.100:8081/v1/embeddings#bge-m3"
      rerank: "http://192.168.1.100:8082/v1/completions#qwen3-reranker"
      gen: "http://192.168.1.100:8083/v1/chat/completions#qwen3-4b"

URI Format: http://host:port/path#modelname

Supported Endpoints:

Example with llama.cpp server:

# Start llama-server for generation
llama-server -m model.gguf --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8083

# Configure GNO to use it
# gen: "http://192.168.1.100:8083/v1/chat/completions#my-model"

Benefits:

• Offload inference to a GPU server
• Share models across multiple machines
• Use larger models than local hardware supports
• Keep local machine responsive during inference

Timeouts

models:
  loadTimeout: 60000 # Model load timeout (ms)
  inferenceTimeout: 30000 # Inference timeout (ms)
  warmModelTtl: 300000 # Keep-warm duration (ms)

FTS Tokenizer

Set at gno init, cannot be changed without rebuilding.

The Snowball stemmer enables matching across word forms: “running” matches “run”, “scored” matches “score”, plurals match singulars.

# Initialize with unicode61 (no stemming)
gno init --tokenizer unicode61

Environment Variables

Override paths (applied before platform defaults):

File Locations

Linux (XDG): | Path | Purpose | |——|———| | ~/.config/gno/index.yml | Config | | ~/.local/share/gno/index-default.sqlite | Database | | ~/.cache/gno/models/ | Model cache |

macOS: | Path | Purpose | |——|———| | ~/Library/Application Support/gno/config/index.yml | Config | | ~/Library/Application Support/gno/data/index-default.sqlite | Database | | ~/Library/Caches/gno/models/ | Model cache |

Run gno doctor to see resolved paths for your system.

Editing Config

Edit directly or use CLI:

# Add collection via CLI
gno collection add ~/notes --name notes

# View config (Linux)
cat ~/.config/gno/index.yml

# View config (macOS)
cat ~/Library/Application\ Support/gno/config/index.yml

After manual edits, run gno update to apply changes.