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Quick Start

Get up and running with Stratum in 5 minutes.

Install Stratum

The fastest way is to download a pre-built binary from the GitHub Releases page — Linux (AppImage / .deb / .rpm), Windows, macOS, and Android — or build from source with one command inside the Nix dev shell:

nix develop ./nix
cargo build --workspace && npm install && npm run tauri:dev

See the Installation guide for prerequisites and per-platform details.

First Launch

On the first run of a brand-new vault, Stratum shows an onboarding wizard that walks you through setting up a working vault in under a minute:

  1. Welcome — Choose a vault folder (or use the vault that was already created).
  2. Templates — Optionally install a curated set of starter templates into your vault's templates/ directory (daily note, meeting notes, reading list, project tracker, and more).
  3. Sample vault — Optionally seed a few linked example notes that demonstrate backlinks and the knowledge graph (only if the vault is empty).
  4. Finish — Open the Quick Start guide to explore your new vault.

The wizard only appears once per vault. You can re-run it any time from Settings → Developer → Reset onboarding. See the Templates guide for details on the bundled starter set.

What's a vault?

A vault is simply a directory of Markdown files. All your notes live here as plain .md files. Stratum adds a hidden .pkm/ folder for its cache (SQLite database, search index, config) — this can always be rebuilt from your .md files.

Interface Overview

The main interface has three areas:

  1. Sidebar (left) — Navigation tabs + page list
  2. Main area (center) — The active panel (editor, graph, search, etc.)
  3. Page panels — Backlinks, properties, suggested connections
Tab Icon Function
Journal Daily notes
Pages Page list, create/delete
Graph Knowledge graph visualization
Search Full-text block search
Query Datalog query interface
Templates Reusable page templates
Flashcards Spaced repetition review
Whiteboards Excalidraw spatial canvas
Settings App configuration

Click any tab to open its panel. The sidebar can be collapsed with the ◀ button.

Your First Note

  1. Click Pages in the sidebar (or press /)
  2. Click + New
  3. Enter a path like notes/my-first-note.md
  4. Optionally enter a title like My First Note
  5. Click Create

The page opens in the block editor. Start typing — every paragraph is a block.

This is a block.
  This is a child block (indented).
    This is a deeper child.

TODO This is a task

[[Wiki-link to another page]]

#tag

Type [[ to start a wiki-link. Stratum will autocomplete existing pages:

  1. Create a second page: notes/second-page.md
  2. Go back to your first note
  3. Type [[second and select the autocomplete suggestion
  4. The link renders as a clickable reference

View the Graph

  1. Click Graph in the sidebar
  2. You'll see your two pages as connected nodes
  3. Click a node to navigate to that page
  4. Drag nodes to reposition them

What's Next?