Install GNO

Getting Started

Quickstart

Go from a local folder to hybrid search, browsing, and AI answers in under five minutes.

Go from a local folder to hybrid search, a browsable workspace, and AI answers in under five minutes. Most users access GNO through their AI tools — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, OpenClaw — so the quickstart wires that up too. This guide assumes GNO is already installed; if not, start with installation.

1. Point GNO at your documents

A folder can be Markdown, PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, plain text, or a mix.

gno init ~/notes --name notes
gno init ~/Documents --name docs --pattern "**/*.md"

Prefer a guided UI? Start gno serve, open http://localhost:3000, and use the first-run checklist to add a folder, pick a preset, and start indexing with zero CLI commands.

2. Index your documents

gno index

Runs keyword (BM25) + vector indexing. GNO handles Markdown, PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, and plain text automatically.

On first run, GNO may download local models (embedding ~500MB, optional rerank/gen models +700MB–1.2GB). Subsequent runs use the cache. To skip startup downloads, set GNO_NO_AUTO_DOWNLOAD=1 and run gno models pull explicitly.

Cached GGUF files are validated before load, so intercepted HTML or other non-model responses are removed with a clear recovery error.

gno ls

3. Connect your AI tools

This is where GNO gets powerful. Instead of copy-pasting context, your AI tools search and retrieve from your documents directly. Pick one or both integration paths:

Skills — for coding agents

Installs GNO as a /gno slash command. Zero context window overhead — the agent only loads GNO tools when the command is invoked. Works with Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and OpenClaw.

gno skill install --target claude --scope user
gno skill install --target codex --scope user
gno skill install --target openclaw --scope user
gno skill install --target all --scope user # install everywhere

MCP — for AI assistants and editors

Installs GNO as a Model Context Protocol server so Claude Desktop, Claude Cowork, Cursor, Zed, Windsurf, and others can call GNO tools automatically in conversation.

gno mcp install --target claude-desktop
gno mcp install --target cursor
gno mcp install --target zed
gno mcp install --target windsurf
gno mcp install --target claude-code # MCP for Claude Code
gno mcp status # see what's configured

Restart the client after install. Then just ask in natural language: “Search my notes for deployment procedures” or “Find architecture docs related to this change”.

If you prefer the terminal, GNO exposes three search modes for different trade-offs between speed and depth.

# Fast keyword search (~5–20ms)
gno search "project deadlines"

# Meaning-based search (~0.5s)
gno vsearch "how to handle errors"

# Hybrid — keyword + semantic + reranking, best results
gno query "authentication best practices"

# AI answer with citations
gno ask "what is the main goal of project X" --answer

Output formats

For scripting, every command supports machine-readable output:

gno search "important" --json
gno search "important" --files
gno search "important" --csv
gno search "important" --md

Next steps