smolbren vault — manage your registered vaults

A vault is a named reference to a directory of Markdown files on your filesystem. smolbren stores the vault’s search index and knowledge graph separately in its data directory (~/.smolbren/vaults/<name>/), so your source files are never modified. All commands that operate on notes (search, query, get, links, etc.) require at least one vault to be registered and indexed.

vault add

smolbren vault add <name> <path> [--default]

string

required

A short, memorable name for this vault. Used with --vault to select it in other commands. Must be unique across all registered vaults.

path

required

Absolute or relative path to the root directory of your Markdown vault. The path is canonicalized to an absolute path at registration time; the directory must already exist.

boolean

Mark this vault as the default. When --default is set, subsequent commands that need a vault will use this one automatically without requiring --vault. The first vault you add is always made the default regardless of this flag.

Example

smolbren vault add notes ~/Documents/notes --default

{"name": "notes", "path": "/Users/alice/Documents/notes", "default": true}

The path in the response is the canonicalized absolute path. The default field reflects whether this vault is now the active default.

vault list

List all registered vaults and their current status. Synopsis

smolbren vault list

Output Returns an array of vault objects. Each object contains:

Field	Type	Description
`name`	string	The vault’s registered name
`path`	string	Absolute path to the vault directory
`default`	boolean	Whether this is the current default vault
`indexed_at_ms`	integer \| null	Unix timestamp (ms) of the last completed index run, or `null` if the vault has never been indexed
`indexed_notes`	integer \| null	Number of notes in the current index
`embedded_notes`	integer \| null	Number of notes represented in the embedding dataset
`embedding_lag_notes`	integer \| null	Current notes whose latest content hash has not been embedded
`orphaned_embedding_notes`	integer \| null	Embedded notes no longer present in the note index
`embeddings_stale`	boolean \| null	Whether either lag or orphaned embeddings exist
`embedding_status_error`	string \| null	Why embedding freshness could not be calculated, such as `index missing`

Example

smolbren vault list

[
  {
    "name": "notes",
    "path": "/Users/alice/Documents/notes",
    "default": true,
    "indexed_at_ms": 1751234567890,
    "indexed_notes": 1607,
    "embedded_notes": 1598,
    "embedding_lag_notes": 9,
    "orphaned_embedding_notes": 0,
    "embeddings_stale": true,
    "embedding_status_error": null
  },
  {
    "name": "work",
    "path": "/Users/alice/work-vault",
    "default": false,
    "indexed_at_ms": null,
    "indexed_notes": null,
    "embedded_notes": null,
    "embedding_lag_notes": null,
    "orphaned_embedding_notes": null,
    "embeddings_stale": null,
    "embedding_status_error": "index missing"
  }
]

vault remove

Unregister a vault by name. Synopsis

smolbren vault remove <name>

string

required

The name of the vault to remove, as it appears in vault list.

vault remove permanently deletes the vault’s index data from ~/.smolbren/vaults/<name>/, including the notes dataset, edges dataset, and ontology cache. Your source Markdown files are untouched, but you will need to run smolbren index again if you re-add the vault. This operation cannot be undone.

If the removed vault was the default, no default vault is set afterward — you must either add a new vault with --default or update your config manually. Example

smolbren vault remove work

{"removed": "work"}

Commands

Output & Errors

smolbren vault — manage your registered vaults

vault add

vault list

vault remove

​vault add

​vault list

​vault remove

vault add

vault list

vault remove