Search finds. GNO proves.

Point GNO at folders on your machine and it builds one local index across them. From there you get keyword, semantic, and hybrid search; a browsable workspace with a folder tree, a markdown editor, and a knowledge graph; AI answers that cite the passage they came from; and one-command hookup so Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and seven other clients can retrieve from the same index. It is open source, MIT licensed, and runs entirely on your machine.

Markdown, PDF, Office documents, plain text, and source code, plus portable mail and calendar exports, transcripts, JSONL, and browser exports. Markdown stays editable in the workspace; converted binaries stay read-only, and the interface never blurs the two. Point it at a folder that mixes all of them and it handles the mix.

Those match the words you typed. GNO also matches meaning, so a search for “how we handle retries” finds the paragraph that talks about exponential backoff without the word “retry” in it. It reads inside PDFs and Office files rather than just their filenames, it spans every folder you have added rather than one vault, it answers questions in natural language with citations, and it exposes all of that to your AI tools. If your material is one folder of Markdown and you only ever search for exact strings, ripgrep is genuinely fine.

No GPU required and no account required. Local GNO is free and MIT licensed. Indexing and keyword search are CPU-only. Semantic search and AI answers use built-in local models that run on CPU, and will use Apple Silicon or a GPU if you have one. You can point inference at an external endpoint instead, which is an explicit opt-in, and the only paid thing anywhere is the optional gno.sh hosted publishing layer.

Not by default. Indexing, search, and the built-in models run on your machine with zero telemetry, and work offline once models are cached. There are exactly three boundaries, all explicit: downloading a model, configuring an HTTP inference endpoint (which then receives the text for that model role), and uploading an artifact you exported for gno.sh. Each collection also carries a fail-closed egress policy that authentication cannot override.

One command per client. gno mcp install --target <client> pins the exact runtime, index, and workspace roots so the client opens the same workspace regardless of shell environment, and gno skill install gives coding agents CLI-level retrieval with no protocol overhead. MCP exposes 25 read-only tools by default, including Capsule build, Capsule verification, Knowledge Delta, and the opt-in verified Ask tool. The 15 mutating tools require a separate flag.

Yes, and that is the design center. Your agent retrieves the passages it needs on demand instead of loading a knowledge base into every session. Run gno daemon and several clients share one warm resident runtime, one index, and one model lifecycle over a Streamable HTTP MCP gateway, so the second agent does not pay the first agent's cold start.

Most of them return a ranked list and hope for the best. GNO produces evidence you can check: a Context Capsule with exact line spans and content hashes under one token budget, an answer path that abstains unless every substantive claim is supported, freshness receipts when sources move, and a setup command that refuses to report success until lexical search returns a real result from your corpus. The benchmark artifacts behind those claims ship in the repository. If you only need search and a workspace, that all works without ever touching the evidence layer.

No, and GNO will not claim otherwise. Verified Ask checks a draft only against the exact evidence retained in its closed local Capsule. It binds verdicts to evidence IDs, line ranges, and hashes, reports stale evidence and verifier degradation, and abstains when support is incomplete. It does not prove anything beyond your corpus, and it cannot make a wrong source right.

An optional publishing layer. Export a note or collection locally, upload the artifact, and get a reading-first page: public URL, secret link, invite-only space, or a share encrypted before it leaves your machine. Public snapshots can also expose the shipped read-only agent projection. Private agent API access is deferred: secret-link, invite-only, and encrypted spaces remain human-reader surfaces. The five-partner knowledge-room pilot is a consented concierge validation program, not a generally available service. Nothing outside the artifact you exported ever reaches the server.

Yes to both. Point GNO at an Obsidian vault and it indexes wiki links, frontmatter tags, and the whole tree, adding hybrid search, cited answers, and agent access on top of what you already have. For an LLM Wiki, where an agent compiles raw sources into a persistent markdown knowledge base, GNO indexes both the compiled wiki and the raw sources, so retrieval spans both layers.