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Quick Start

Get up and running with Stratum in 5 minutes.

First Launch

When you start Stratum for the first time, you'll see the Vault Picker screen:

  1. Click Choose Vault Folder
  2. Select an empty directory (or a new folder) — this will be your vault
  3. Stratum creates a .pkm/ cache directory inside the vault and loads the interface

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?