Quick Start

Get a Context Nest vault running in under 2 minutes.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20 or later
• A terminal (macOS, Linux, Windows with WSL or Git Bash)

Steps

1. Install the CLI
2. Create a vault with a starter recipe
3. Add documents to your vault
4. Query context for AI agent consumption

By the end, you'll have a versioned, queryable knowledge vault that any AI agent can read.

Working across vaults

You don't have to cd into a vault to use it. The CLI keeps a vault registry that maps a short alias to each vault's path, so you can target any registered vault from any folder:

ctx vault add work ~/vaults/work-kb   # register a vault under an alias
ctx vault default work                # make it the default
ctx --vault work query "#roadmap"     # run against it from anywhere
ctx vault which                       # show which vault the CLI would use, and why

Published-only by default

Retrieval returns published documents only by default — drafts you're still working on stay out of agent context until you publish them. When you do want to see drafts (for example while authoring), add --include-drafts:

ctx query "#roadmap"                   # published documents only
ctx query "#roadmap" --include-drafts  # include drafts too

Consent on writes

Every command that writes asks before it does and then prints the exact list of files it touched. Preview any write without changing anything using --dry-run; in a non-interactive shell (agents, CI), destructive commands refuse unless you pass --yes or --force.