Vaults

A vault is a folder. There is no import, no library and no database of your writing: markdown files in folders you arranged, opened where they already are.

Any folder qualifies. A folder your other editor has been writing into for years is a vault the moment you open it, and every file in it is a note from the first byte — nothing is registered, converted or rewritten.

Opening one

The first launch stands on nothing. numen does not make a folder for you before you have said anything: the window comes up showing its name, the vaults it knows — none yet — and the one thing there is to do, New vault.

From then on it opens the vault you had last.

New vault makes a folder, Open vault takes one you already have; either way your machine’s own folder picker is what chooses it. Both are in the commands — Ctrl/⌘ P — once a vault is open.

The first scan runs behind the window: names and words are searchable almost at once, and larger vaults keep filling in while you work. What is still being done is shown in the corner of the window.

What is not a note

Two places are skipped whole:

• .numen/, which is where the vault keeps its own identity and anything read out of scanned documents;
• any folder whose name begins with a dot, which is where other tools keep their state.

Files removed from the vault are moved into .trash/ inside it, which is a dot-folder and so is out of the index as well. Nothing there is destroyed.

What a folder of yours becomes

.md files	notes: read, searched, linked, drawn in the plex.
.pdf and .epub	documents: their text is searched and a result opens the book at the page.
everything else	left exactly as it is. Images, spreadsheets, whatever else you keep there — numen does not touch them, and a note can point at one as an attachment.

Nothing is moved into a structure of numen’s own. The folders you arranged are the folders you keep.

Several vaults

An installation keeps a list of vaults and shows one at a time. Moving to another happens in the window you already have: Vaults in the commands lists them, and choosing one puts it in front of you.

Before the swap, every open tab writes what it owes. A tab holding a question you have not answered — a note whose file changed underneath it — calls the swap off and stays where it is, so nothing is left half-written.

A few rules the list keeps:

Names are unique	a folder added under a name another vault has gets a number appended, and you rename it afterwards.
Vaults do not overlap	a folder inside a vault you already have, or one that holds a vault, is refused. One file belongs to one vault.
A whole disk is not a vault	neither is your home folder itself.

Moving the folder

Move it, rename it, put it on another disk. The vault carries its identity inside its own folder, so numen recognises it and the list catches up with where it went.

Copying a vault is the one case that is refused: two folders carrying the same identity are not two vaults. Delete .numen/ from the copy and add it again — it becomes a vault of its own, with its own identity, and its notes are its own from then on.

Taking one off the list

Forget takes the vault off the list and out of the search index. The folder stays exactly where it is, and adding it again brings back the same vault.

Erase forgets it and moves the folder to wherever your machine puts deleted things, so you can still fetch it back from there.

Neither can take away the vault you are looking at, and neither can take the last one you have — the window always stands on something.