Use Cases

Real-world workflows for common scenarios.

Personal Notes

Index and search your note-taking system.

Setup

# Initialize with notes folder
gno init ~/notes --name notes --pattern "**/*.md"

# Index
gno update

Daily Workflow

# Find what you wrote about a topic
gno search "project meeting decisions"

# Semantic search for ideas
gno vsearch "how to improve productivity"

# Get AI summary
gno ask "what did I decide about the API design" --answer

Tips

  • Use --exclude for template or boilerplate folders
  • Add contexts for different note types (work, personal)

Code Documentation

Index project docs alongside code.

Setup

gno init ~/projects/myapp/docs --name myapp-docs --pattern "**/*.md"
gno init ~/projects/myapp/src --name myapp-code --pattern "**/*.ts" --exclude node_modules,dist
gno update

Searching

# Find API documentation
gno search "authentication endpoint"

# Find code examples
gno search "handleError" --lang typescript

# Cross-reference docs and code
gno query "how does the auth flow work"

Research Papers

Index academic papers and references.

Setup

gno init ~/papers --name research --pattern "**/*.pdf"
gno update

PDF extraction creates searchable text.

Workflow

# Find papers on a topic
gno search "machine learning optimization"

# Semantic similarity
gno vsearch "neural network architectures for NLP"

# Get full paper content
gno get <docid>

Meeting Transcripts

Index transcripts from meetings.

Setup

gno init ~/meetings --name meetings --pattern "**/*.md"
gno update

Searching Decisions

# Find action items
gno search "action items" --full

# Find discussions about a topic
gno query "budget discussion Q4"

# Get AI summary
gno ask "what did we decide about the timeline" --answer

Multi-Project Setup

Manage multiple collections.

Setup

# Add work projects
gno collection add ~/work/project-a --name project-a
gno collection add ~/work/project-b --name project-b

# Add personal notes
gno collection add ~/notes --name personal

# Index all
gno update

Scoped Searches

Use contexts to scope searches:

# Add context for work
gno context add "project-a:" "Backend API project"
gno context add "project-b:" "Frontend React app"
gno context add "personal:" "Personal notes and journal"

AI Agent Integration

Use GNO as a knowledge base for AI assistants.

Setup

See MCP Integration for Claude Desktop/Cursor setup.

Patterns

  1. Research: Ask the AI to search for context before answering
  2. Documentation: Let AI reference your docs when coding
  3. Memory: Use indexed notes as persistent memory

Example prompts:

“Search my notes for anything about the authentication system, then help me debug this login issue”

“Find my project requirements and suggest implementation approach”

Incremental Updates

GNO only re-indexes changed files.

# After editing files
gno update

# Check what's indexed
gno status

Backup and Sync

GNO stores data in standard locations:

  • Config: ~/.config/gno/
  • Database: ~/.local/share/gno/
  • Models: ~/.cache/gno/ (can be re-downloaded)

Backup

# Backup config and database
cp -r ~/.config/gno ~/backup/gno-config
cp -r ~/.local/share/gno ~/backup/gno-data

Restore

# Restore on new machine
cp -r ~/backup/gno-config ~/.config/gno
cp -r ~/backup/gno-data ~/.local/share/gno

# Re-download models
gno models pull --all

Git Sync

You can version-control the config:

cd ~/.config/gno
git init
git add .
git commit -m "GNO config"

The database should not be version-controlled (binary, large).