Flavite — local-first Zettelkasten notes

Setup and installation

Mon, 09 Nov 2026 20:58:53 +0000

# Setup and installation

How to build, install, and first-run Flavite from source. Every command and path here reflects the current codebase.

# Prerequisites

Requirement	Details
Rust toolchain	Pinned to 1.98.1 by `rust-toolchain.toml` (rustup installs it automatically on first build). Components used: `rustfmt`, `clippy`, `llvm-tools-preview`. The workspace MSRV is 1.90.0 (enforced by CI, not by the pin).
`just`	Command runner for the development recipes.
Display server (desktop app only)	`flavite` needs Wayland (`WAYLAND_DISPLAY`/`WAYLAND_SOCKET`) or X11 (`DISPLAY`). Without one it prints an error and exits 1, pointing you to `flavite-cli` for headless use.
GPU (graph view)	The graph view defaults to an instanced wgpu (Vulkan) renderer. Without a working adapter the app still runs — notes and editing are never disabled — but see Graph backend for the software fallback.

Headless use (flavite-cli) needs none of the display/GPU requirements.

Flavite Guide

Mon, 09 Nov 2026 21:30:18 +0000

# Flavite Guide - Draft

Flavite is a local-first desktop app for Zettelkasten-style note-taking. You write plain Markdown files in a folder (the “vault”), and Flavite gives you:

a movable tab workspace to view/edit notes side by side,
a knowledge graph of the links between notes,
full-text search and structural queries,
safe editing: revision guards, conflict handling, recovery, atomic saves.

Your notes are just files. Flavite never converts them to a proprietary format, never phones home, and never touches a network or account. Everything Flavite remembers about your vault (layout, settings, graph pins, themes) lives inside the vault folder under .flavite/.

flavite-cli

Mon, 09 Nov 2026 21:27:45 +0000

# flavite-cli - draft

flavite-cli is the headless companion to the desktop app: vault access without a GPU or display. This is the complete command reference, verified against the current crates/flavite-cli.

flavite-cli [global flags] <command> [command flags]

# Global flags

All global flags work before or after the subcommand.

Flag	Effect
`--vault PATH`, `-v PATH`	Vault to operate on. See resolution order below.
`--verbose`, `-x`	DEBUG-level logging instead of INFO.
`--no-watch`	Disable the filesystem watcher for this invocation.
`--json`	Machine-readable JSON output where supported (also emits JSONL events on stderr).

Note the short flags: verbose is -x, vault is -v.

Query language reference

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 23:43:43 +0000

# Query language reference

Flavite’s query expressions power flavite-cli query, flavite-cli search, and the desktop app’s Search view. They parse into a typed query AST (flavite_index::Query, re-exported as flavite_api::Query). This document describes the textual syntax and execution semantics as implemented today in crates/flavite-index/src/query.rs.

# Two input modes (RFC-0006 S06, D-07)

Expression mode (explicit operators — flavite-cli query and flavite-cli search --mode expression):

Search

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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