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Knotic
Getting Started

Knotic Overview

Knotic is an AI editor built on top of VS Code. It is designed for teams that want strong control over context, model routing, and execution without giving up the familiarity of a desktop IDE.

Best starting path

If this is your first pass through the product, read this page once, then continue with Installation, Sessions, and Context Lens in that order. That sequence gives you setup first, daily workflow second, and context control third.

What Knotic Is

Knotic is built for development teams that want an AI editor with more control over:

  • project context
  • model and provider routing
  • execution visibility
  • multi-step workflows
  • repository-local knowledge

What Makes Knotic Different

Knotic is centered on context governance and workflow control.

  • Your project knowledge is stored in the workspace under .knotic/ instead of disappearing into a remote chat history.
  • You can work with multiple providers, including Knotic, OpenRouter, GitHub, Anthropic, OpenAI, and local endpoints.
  • Context Lens lets you inspect the payload before a model call instead of treating context as a black box.
  • Architect and Brainstorming support multi-step work that would otherwise become a fragile one-shot prompt.
  • HQ gives you visibility into Skills, model usage, monitoring data, and MCP servers.

How Knotic Works At a High Level

Knotic combines a few connected surfaces instead of forcing every task into one chat window:

  • Sessions for day-to-day work
  • Context Lens for context inspection and cleanup
  • Brainstorming for exploring alternatives
  • Architect for staged execution
  • HQ for operational visibility and control
  • Knotic Settings for runtime configuration

How Knotic Stores Project Context

When you start using Knotic in a workspace, it creates and manages a small set of project-owned files under .knotic/.

  • .knotic/brain.loom: reusable project knowledge that survives across sessions.
  • .knotic/<chatId>.knot: session-specific context and conversation-derived state.
  • .knotic/skills/<slug>/SKILL.md: repo-versioned skills that travel with the codebase.
  • .knotic/spec/<slug>.spec.md: specs produced from Brainstorming and used by Architect.

This gives you a repository-local memory model: reusable knowledge stays with the project, and session context stays tied to the work that produced it.

Guides

If you are learning Knotic for the first time, start from these pages:

Settings and Inference

For provider setup, privacy model, and Knotic-managed inference, continue with:

Suggested Workflow

For most teams, the normal flow looks like this:

  1. Open Sessions and start a conversation.
  2. Ask Knotic to inspect or change code.
  3. Open Context Lens when you want to review or trim what will be sent to the model.
  4. Use Brainstorming before large or ambiguous tasks.
  5. Use Architect when the task should be executed as a plan with explicit steps.
  6. Review activity in HQ when you want visibility into models, skills, monitoring, or MCP servers.

Useful Shortcuts

  • Sessions: Ctrl+Alt+I
  • Brainstorming: Ctrl+Alt+B
  • Architect: Ctrl+Alt+A
  • HQ: Ctrl+Alt+H
  • Knotic Settings: Ctrl+Alt+,
  • Context Lens: Ctrl+Shift+L

First Things to Know

  • Knotic works as a desktop application for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
  • You do not need to use the hosted Knotic runtime if your team prefers another provider or a local endpoint.
  • Your first real Knotic workspace usually becomes more useful after you configure a provider and let the .knotic/ project files accumulate reusable context.