Create a Vault

Using a starter recipe

Starter recipes scaffold a vault with documents, packs, and agent instructions tailored to a role:

ctx init --starter developer    # Engineering teams
ctx init --starter executive    # Strategic leadership
ctx init --starter analyst      # Research / OSINT
ctx init --starter team         # General team knowledge base
ctx init --starter sales        # Sales teams

See all starters

ctx init --list-starters

Empty vault

ctx init --name "My Project"

This creates the vault structure without any starter content. You can apply a starter later by running ctx init --starter <recipe> in the same directory.

Register it as a named vault

So you can reach this vault from any folder, register it in the vault registry under a short alias. You can do this at creation time or afterwards:

# At init: register the new vault as the registry default
ctx init --name "My Project" --set-default

# Or register an existing vault path later
ctx vault add myproject ~/code/my-project --set-default

# Confirm which vault the CLI resolves to, and why
ctx vault which

Once registered, target it from anywhere with the global --vault flag:

ctx --vault myproject list

Consent on writes

ctx init writes files, so like every write command it asks for confirmation first and then prints the exact list of files it created. To preview without touching disk, add --dry-run; to skip the prompt in a script or agent, pass --yes. Nothing is overwritten silently — use --force to allow overwriting existing files.

What gets created

my-project/
├── CONTEXT.md           # Vault-level system prompt for AI agents
├── context.yaml         # Machine-readable index
├── nodes/               # Knowledge documents
│   └── INDEX.md
├── sources/             # Source nodes (live data)
├── packs/               # Context packs
└── .context/
    └── config.yaml      # Vault configuration

Layout modes

Context Nest supports two layout modes:

ctx init --layout obsidian --name "My Notes"