Stellavault

The local-first second brain that Claude remembers.

Karpathy's self-compiling wiki × Zettelkasten — fully local, vault-safe, and MCP-native.

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🤖 Add to Claude / Cursor · ⬇ Desktop App · ⚡ Quickstart · 🌐 Live Demo

One command to let Claude read your vault:

`bash

npx -y stellavault setup # wires the MCP server into Claude Code / Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, or VS Code

`

Claude Code user? Install the plugin instead — the MCP server plus /vault-ask, /vault-review, /vault-decision skills, in two commands:

`

/plugin marketplace add Evanciel/stellavault

/plugin install stellavault@stellavault

`

A second brain that compiles itself. Stellavault fuses two ideas about how knowledge should live and grow:

• 🧠 Karpathy's self-compiling wiki — drop in anything (a PDF, a YouTube link, a passing thought) and it's auto-extracted into raw/, then compiled into a clean _wiki/ of concepts and backlinks. Your knowledge re-compiles itself as it grows, instead of rotting in a folder.
• 🕸️ Zettelkasten — atomic notes, [[wikilinks]], and emergent connections, so a *web of ideas* (not a folder tree) becomes the real structure of how you think.

The result is one local-first knowledge tool — a full markdown editor, a 3D neural graph, hybrid AI search, and spaced-repetition memory decay — shipped as a desktop app, CLI, Obsidian plugin, and MCP server that lets Claude read your entire vault. No cloud, no API keys, and your original files are never modified.

Your vault as a neural network. Local-first, no cloud required.

Contents

Highlights · Why Stellavault? · Install · Editor · Pipeline · Intelligence · Search & Ranking · MCP Integration · 3D Visualization · Configuration · Performance · Tech Stack · Security · Troubleshooting

Highlights

• 🧠 It compiles itself. Drop in a PDF, a YouTube link, or a half-formed thought — Stellavault extracts it to raw/, then *compiles* a clean _wiki/ with concepts and backlinks. Knowledge that organizes itself as it grows.
• 🔍 Search that actually finds it. Hybrid retrieval fuses semantic meaning, exact keywords (BM25), and your own [[wikilinks]] / #tags with weighted RRF, then re-ranks by an FSRS memory model so what you're *actually* using resurfaces. 50+ languages, fully local, zero API keys.
• 🌌 Your mind, in 3D. A real-time neural graph (React Three Fiber) — cluster view with folder drilldown, per-note local graphs, tag overlays, and two-class edges that keep *your* wikilinks visually distinct from AI-inferred similarity. Scales to a full 17k-note vault. A way to *see* the shape of what you know.
• 🤖 Claude reads your entire vault. A first-class MCP server (21 tools): Claude can search, ask, draft, lint, and analyze your knowledge from Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, or VS Code.
• ⏳ **It never *silently* forgets.** FSRS memory decay surfaces the real notes you're about to lose — plus gap, contradiction, and duplicate detection across the whole vault.
• 🔒 Local-first. Vault-safe. Zero keys. Local embeddings, an on-device vector store, and your original files are never modified. Nothing leaves your machine unless you opt in.

Why Stellavault?

Most tools make you choose between *writing*, *searching*, and *remembering*. Stellavault does all three — locally, and in a way Claude can read.

[!NOTE]

Not either/or — Stellavault even runs inside Obsidian as a plugin. Keep your editor; add a brain.

Install

Desktop App (Recommended — one click)

⬇ Download for Windows x64 · 258 MB · ZIP

⬇ Download for Linux x64 · 237 MB · ZIP

macOS Coming soon

[!TIP]

Download → Unzip → Run stellavault.exe (Windows) or stellavault (Linux) → Pick your notes folder → Done.

CLI (for developers)

npm install -g stellavault    # or: npx stellavault

stellavault init # Interactive setup (3 min): index vault + connect AI clients stellavault setup # Connect to Claude Code/Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code (one command) stellavault graph # Launch 3D graph in browser

Requires Node.js 20+. Run stellavault doctor to diagnose issues.

Obsidian Plugin

1. Download main.js + manifest.json + styles.css from stellavault-obsidian releases
2. Place in .obsidian/plugins/stellavault/
3. Enable in Settings → Community plugins
4. Start API: npx stellavault graph in your vault folder

Editor

Full-featured markdown editor — on par with Obsidian.

Full formatting & block support — tables, code, KaTeX, slash commands, wikilinks, split view… (click to expand)

The Pipeline

Capture ──→ Organize ──→ Distill ──→ Express

Drop anything → auto-extract → raw/ → compile → _wiki/ → draft

Inspired by Karpathy's self-compiling knowledge architecture.

Ingest 14 Formats

Express: Get Knowledge Out

stellavault draft "AI" --format blog      # Blog post from your vault

stellavault draft "AI" --format outline # Structured outline stellavault draft "AI" --ai # Claude API enhanced ($0.03)

Or use the Express tab in the desktop app — enter a topic, pick a format, and generate a draft grounded in your vault. Save to _drafts/ and edit inline.

Intelligence (What Makes Stellavault Unique)

These features do not exist in Obsidian — even with plugins.

Search & Ranking

Hybrid retrieval that fuses multiple signals with weighted Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) — tuned for a personal knowledge vault, fully local, zero API keys:

• Entity matching resolves natural-language queries via fuzzy substring + punctuation-normalized matching (Korean / CJK friendly), with a per-document diversity cap so one large note can't flood the top results.
• Recency reuses the same FSRS memory model as the decay engine (not raw file mtime) — a note you're forgetting resurfaces; a mastered evergreen note isn't buried just for being old.
• Adaptive rerank (long-running MCP server) further boosts results by your current session context (recent tags / paths).
• Every weight is tunable per vault or via env vars — see Configuration.

MCP Integration (21 Tools)

stellavault setup            # one command → Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code

or, for Claude Code only:

claude mcp add stellavault -- stellavault serve

Manual config (any MCP client) — copy-paste JSON

{

"mcpServers": { "stellavault": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "stellavault", "serve"] } } }

Listed on the MCP registry as io.github.Evanciel/stellavault (also discoverable via Gla