Monet

One brain for you and your agents.

A quiet, local-first Markdown vault: a rich desktop app for you, and a CLI and MCP server for your agents. Your notes stay as plain .md files in a folder you own.

Monet stores notes as plain .md files in a folder you own. Links are [[wikilinks]], backlinks are indexed automatically, attachments resolve relative to the vault, and the same folder serves the desktop app, the command line and AI agents — with no proprietary database in between. One vault, one engine, two ways in:

Why Monet

Install the CLI

macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/felipebarcelospro/monet/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://github.com/felipebarcelospro/monet/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex

The installer picks the right build for your system, verifies the SHA-256 checksum and installs to ~/.local/bin — no Node.js needed. Set MONET_INSTALL_DIR to install somewhere else.

Homebrew:

brew install felipebarcelospro/tap/monet

npm (any platform, needs Node ≥ 22):

npm install -g @monet-ai/cli

Then point it at your notes:

monet vault use ~/Documents/Vault
monet vault current
monet note list

Related MCP server: agent-notes-mcp

Contents

• Why Monet

• Features

• Screenshots

• Requirements

• Install

• Build from source

• Monorepo structure

• For you: the desktop app

• For your agents: CLI and MCP

• The vault format

• Markdown support

• Architecture

• Testing

• Contributing

• Security

• License

Features

Screenshots

Requirements

• Node.js 22 or later

• pnpm 11 or later

• macOS, Linux or Windows

• Bun (optional) — only to build the standalone CLI binaries

The app is developed and tested on macOS first; the other platforms use the same Electron, Vite and Node code paths.

Build from source

# 1. Install the workspace.
pnpm install

# 2. Create a deterministic demo vault in ExampleVault/.
pnpm seed

# 3. Run the desktop app with hot reload.
pnpm dev -- --vault ExampleVault

The app opens on the note you last edited. To use your own folder, press ⌘O (or Ctrl+O) and choose it, or run monet vault use <path> from the CLI.

Build a desktop bundle

pnpm package
# macOS:  build/Monet.app
# Linux:  build/app
# Windows: build/app

The bundle is unsigned. On macOS, Gatekeeper asks for confirmation the first time you open it.

Run from source

pnpm --filter @monet/cli build
cd packages/cli && pnpm link --global

monet vault current
monet note list

Monorepo structure

Common scripts

pnpm dev            # Desktop app with hot reload
pnpm dev:cli        # CLI from source
pnpm build          # Build core, CLI and app
pnpm package        # Package the desktop app
pnpm test           # Vitest across all packages
pnpm typecheck      # TypeScript across all packages
pnpm lint           # Biome lint
pnpm format:check   # Biome formatting check
pnpm seed           # Seed ExampleVault/
pnpm screenshots    # Refresh docs/screenshots/

The vault format

A vault is an ordinary folder. Monet never rewrites a file it did not have to touch, and everything it writes is plain Markdown.

---
title: Release Plan
tags: [project, release]
aliases: [Plan]
---

# Release Plan

The release ships on Friday. See [[Design Notes]] and ![[Checklist]].

Tagged #project and #area/product.

• Wikilinks — [[Note]], [[Note|display text]], [[Note#Heading]], [[#Heading]].

• Embeds — ![[Note]], ![[image.png]], ![[report.pdf]].

• Tags — #tag, #nested/tag, or a tags list in the frontmatter.

• Aliases — alias or aliases in the frontmatter.

Notes are indexed on open and on change; the index is derived state, never a second source of truth.

Markdown support

Tables, media, diagrams, display math, callouts and embeds are rendered in place while the cursor is elsewhere; clicking the block puts the cursor back in the Markdown. ⌘E opens the reading view, where the whole note is rendered at once.

Raw HTML is rendered as written. A vault is trusted input: only open notes and vaults you trust. See SECURITY.md.

For you: the desktop app

A quiet place to think. Three columns, a rich editor, and the whole vault as a graph — no cloud, no account, just a folder.

Download

Prebuilt installers are attached to each release:

The desktop app is also on Homebrew:

brew install --cask felipebarcelospro/tap/monet

The builds are not signed. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time (or use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway). On Windows, SmartScreen offers More info → Run anyway. Nothing is hidden about it — the installers are produced from this repository by the Desktop Release workflow, and building from source is always an option.

Features

• Three columns — sidebar (folders, tags, favourites), note list, editor, with an inspector for properties, backlinks, outgoing links and the outline.

• Editor — CodeMirror 6, wikilink autocomplete, live blocks, dirty-state aware saving, per-note history, favourites and reading time.

• Reading view — ⌘E, or the book button, renders the note with editorial typography, tables, media, diagrams, math and embeds.

• Graph — the whole vault as a deterministic force-directed canvas. Filter by tag, click a node to open the note.

• Command palette — ⌘K, plus ⌘P for the quick switcher.

• Inspector — metadata, aliases, tags, word count, reading time, backlinks, outgoing links and the document outline.

• Preferences — theme, locale, sort order, editor width and body font.

• Welcome — create a vault or open an existing folder; recent vaults are remembered.

Keyboard shortcuts follow macOS conventions with Ctrl on Linux and Windows.

For your agents: CLI and MCP

The CLI and the MCP server are how agents reach the same brain. Both are clients of the engine the app uses — an agent sees exactly what you see, because it is the same folder, the same index, the same rules.

The command line

# Notes
monet note new "Release Plan" --folder Projects --tag project
monet note list --tag project
monet note show "Release Plan" --links
monet note edit "Release Plan" --append "Ship on Friday."
monet note move "Release Plan" --to "Archive/Release Plan"
monet note delete "Release Plan" --yes

# Search, links and the graph
monet search "release" --limit 20
monet backlinks "Design Notes"
monet link create "Checklist" --target "Design Notes"
monet graph --format json
monet tags

# Vaults and safety
monet vault use ~/Documents/Vault
monet vault current
monet vault list
monet backup                       # snapshot outside the vault
monet open

Every command accepts --format toon|json|yaml|md|jsonl. The default is TOON, compact for agents; use --format json for programs.

Search

Search is local and dependency-free. It folds accents (reuniao finds Reunião), matches every word of a multi-word query in any order, falls back to a fuzzy title match, and returns an excerpt around the first body hit. Exact and prefix titles rank above aliases, tags and body text.

Embeddings are not part of this release: there is no model download, no vector database and no network call. Semantic and related-note search are on the roadmap, behind the same search surface.

Backups

A vault is a plain folder, and monet backup writes a local snapshot without touching the original:

monet backup                       # ~/.local/share/monet/backups
monet backup --keep 30             # keep the last 30 snapshots
monet backup --output ~/Backups    # choose the destination

Git, Time Machine or any folder synchroniser work too; the vault has no proprietary database. .git, node_modules, dist, build and the app lock are skipped in a snapshot.

Choosing the vault

Monet is designed around one vault. Point the CLI at it once:

monet vault use ~/Documents/Vault

That writes the shared configuration (~/.config/monet/config.json) — the same file the app reads — and remembers the folder. From then on every command works without --vault:

monet note list
monet search "release"
monet graph --format json

monet vault current shows the path in use, where it came from and how many notes it holds. monet vault list shows the current vault and the ones opened recently, including folders that no longer exist.

The resolution order is: --vault, MONET_VAULT, the configured vault, then the current directory. An MCP server can be pinned with MONET_VAULT, while an interactive terminal can switch with monet vault use. The app follows the same configuration, so monet open and the next launch of the window use the same folder.

The MCP server

Monet speaks the Model Context Protocol over stdio:

monet --mcp          # Start the MCP server
monet mcp add        # Register it with the MCP clients it finds
monet skills add     # Install generated skills for supported agents
monet mcp doctor     # Validate startup and tool listing

Tools exposed to agents include search, note_show, note_new, note_list, backlinks, graph, link_create, vault_list, vault_current and vault_use. The server uses the configured vault, so an agent sees the same folder as the app.

To pin a server to a vault without changing the global configuration:

MONET_VAULT=~/Documents/Vault monet --mcp

There is no hand-written skill to keep in sync. monet skills add generates what agents need from the same command declarations that power the CLI, so the guidance always matches the tool. The one habit it teaches: run monet vault current before reading or writing, and never guess a path.

Architecture

Monet is three packages around one engine. The app and the CLI are both clients of @monet/core; the renderer never touches the disk directly.

Electron main ── IPC ── preload ── React renderer
      │                               │
      └──────── @monet/core ──────────┘
                     │
               Markdown files

Read ARCHITECTURE.md for the IPC contract, the monet:// asset protocol, the Markdown pipeline, the index and the save model.

Testing

pnpm test

Vitest runs across @monet/core, @monet/cli and @monet/app. The parser contract is verified against the fixtures in Fixtures/, and the app tests cover the vault service, target resolution and link handling.

pnpm typecheck
pnpm lint
pnpm format:check

CI runs all of them on every push and pull request.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — code, docs, translations, bug reports and screenshots. Read CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, workflow and the review checklist, and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for the community rules.

Good first issues are labelled good first issue. If you are unsure where a change belongs, open a discussion or an issue before writing code.

Security

Please do not open a public issue for a vulnerability. Use GitHub's private vulnerability reporting (Security → Advisories) and read SECURITY.md for the scope and the trust model.

License

MIT © Monet contributors. See LICENSE.