Notes module - Overview

The Notes module (sidebar → Notes, route #/notes) is Navin's knowledge space: a Notion-style block editor, structured databases, a knowledge graph, tasks, files - and above all a native AI memory: your notes become queryable context for the agent, and a note can launch real work (agent blocks).

Everything is local-first: each note is a Markdown file with YAML frontmatter under ~/.navin/notes/. No proprietary format, no lock-in - your notes stay readable with any editor.

Layout

┌────────────┬──────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ Rail       │  Notes list      │  Editor                      │
│ Sections   │  (search,        │  title, tags, blocks,        │
│ Folders    │   pinned,        │  autosave + conflicts        │
│ Tags       │   previews)      │                              │
└────────────┴──────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘

All three columns scroll independently. Focus mode hides the chat for full-screen writing. The Navin chat stays available on the right in the standard view.

Sections

Below the sections: the folders tree (inline creation, deletion trashes the contents) and the tags list with counts.

Editor

Block editor (Tiptap) with native Markdown: what you type is what gets stored.

Slash commands

Type / at the start of a line:

Menu search is accent-tolerant and matches French/English synonyms (/tache finds To-do).

Format bar

Select some text: a floating bar appears with bold, italic, link, six text colours and six highlights (red, orange, amber, green, blue, purple - handy for marking priorities), plus an eraser to clear colours. Colours survive the Markdown round-trip (inline HTML) and stay readable in both light and dark themes.

Links and knowledge

• [[Note title]] creates a wikilink; titles and aliases resolve case-insensitively.
• /link or the link button in the selection bar inserts a regular [text](url) web link; Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on macOS) opens it in the OS browser (via the gateway on packaged desktop / Tauri, where window.open is blocked).
• Backlinks appear automatically under each note.
• Frontmatter #tags feed the Tags section and the Graph.

Saving

• Autosave (800 ms after the last keystroke) plus Ctrl+S to force.
• Conflict detection: the version check and write share an inter-process lock, so two writers cannot silently overwrite each other.
• A version history is kept per note in .history/<note-id>/.

Attachments

Three ways to add a file to a note: /image or /file, drag & drop, or paste (Ctrl+V, handy for screenshots). The file goes to _files/ and the note keeps a portable relative path (never a token inside the Markdown).

Clicking opens an in-product preview (crucial for packaged Windows/macOS/Linux desktop builds: no browser tab, no token-bearing URL):

• images (png, jpg, gif, webp, svg...),
• PDF (embedded Chromium viewer),
• video and audio (players with controls),
• Markdown (rich rendering: headings, tables, highlighted code),
• text/code (monospace view),
• other types: a "no preview" screen with a Download button (blob-based, the token never leaves the app).

AI memory and Navin IA

The note toolbar has a Navin IA menu (next to Export):

Prompts look like: Summarize this note : « Untitled » (fichier ~/.navin/notes/sans-titre-3.md).

• Notes are semantically indexed in the background: chunking by Markdown sections, embeddings (Ollama nomic-embed-text by default via the semanticSearch endpoint), hybrid semantic + lexical search with RRF fusion.
• Full-text search uses a persistent SQLite FTS5 index over titles, bodies, tags, and aliases. Hosts without FTS5 use the deterministic lexical fallback. External edits are detected by file fingerprints.
• The agent has a read-only notes tool: it searches and reads your notes as context during any turn - your notes become the workspace memory.

Markdown folders, Obsidian vaults, and Notion Markdown zip exports can be imported with sandboxed extraction and explicit rename, skip, or overwrite conflict handling.

Export

Per-note Export menu in the toolbar:

Agent blocks (/agent)

An agent block is a fenced code block with the agent language (perfect Markdown round-trip, readable by the agent with file tools). The inserted template describes Objective / Sources / Output. The block renders as a card with a Run button: clicking builds a structured prompt (block spec + note title + file path) and places it in the chat composer; the agent executes and appends the result to the note under ## Result.

This is the "the note no longer describes the work: it launches the work" building block.

Storage and format

~/.navin/notes/
├── <folder>/<note>.md       # Markdown + YAML frontmatter
├── _files/                  # attachments (hash prefix)
├── .history/                # per-note history
├── .notes-manifest.json     # atomic id-to-path lookup
├── .search.sqlite3          # persistent full-text index
├── _views.json              # database views
└── .trash/                  # trash

Note frontmatter:

---
id: 9f2c1a
title: V3 launch
tags: [product, roadmap]
aliases: [V3]
pinned: false
archived: false
folder: projects
props: { status: "in progress", priority: 1 }
created: 2026-08-10T18:00:00.000000Z
updated: 2026-08-10T19:30:00.000000Z
---

Critical files use same-directory temporary files, file fsync, atomic os.replace, and directory fsync where the operating system supports it. Notes, views, history, manifests, and memory-index generations are protected against partial writes.