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: unicode61

# 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

Field	Type	Default	Description
name	string	required	Unique identifier (lowercase)
path	string	required	Absolute path to directory
pattern	glob	**/*	File matching pattern
include	array	[]	Extension allowlist
exclude	array	see below	Patterns to skip
updateCmd	string	-	Shell command before indexing
languageHint	string	-	BCP-47 language code

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

TypeScript project:

- name: project
  path: /Users/you/project
  pattern: "**/*.ts"
  include:
    - .ts
    - .tsx
  exclude:
    - node_modules
    - dist
    - "*.test.ts"

With update command:

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

Contexts

Contexts add semantic hints to improve search relevance.

Scope Types

Type	Key Format	Example
global	/	Applies to all documents
collection	name:	Applies to collection
prefix	gno://collection/path	Applies to path prefix

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

Preset	Disk	Best For
slim	~1GB	Fast responses, lower quality
balanced	~2GB	Good balance (default)
quality	~2.5GB	Best answers, slower

Model Details

All presets use bge-m3 for embeddings (1024 dimensions, multilingual).

Preset	Embed	Rerank	Gen
slim	bge-m3-Q4	bge-reranker-v2-m3-Q4	Qwen3-1.7B-Q4
balanced	bge-m3-Q4	bge-reranker-v2-m3-Q4	SmolLM3-3B-Q4
quality	bge-m3-Q4	bge-reranker-v2-m3-Q4	Qwen3-4B-Q4

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

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.

Tokenizer	Description
unicode61	Unicode-aware (default)
porter	English stemming
trigram	Substring matching

# Initialize with porter stemmer
gno init --tokenizer porter

Environment Variables

Override paths (applied before platform defaults):

Variable	Description
GNO_CONFIG_DIR	Override config directory
GNO_DATA_DIR	Override database directory
GNO_CACHE_DIR	Override model cache

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.