Semantic Search & Ask — the Kimün Server 

    Experimental. The server and its TUI integration are under active development; configuration and behavior may change between releases.

    Kimün's built-in search is fast full-text and fuzzy matching. The optional Kimün server adds a second kind of search on top: semantic — finding notes by meaning rather than exact words — and, when configured with an LLM, Ask: natural-language question-answering grounded in your own notes.

    Kimün works fully without the server. When a server is configured and reachable, the extra capabilities light up automatically.

    What you get 

    • Semantic search — a SEM view in the drawer (activity rail) that finds notes by meaning: searching "how do I deploy" also surfaces the note that says "release procedure".
    • Ask (RAG) — press F6 to ask a question in plain language; the server retrieves the most relevant note chunks and has its configured LLM answer from them, citing the source notes. Only available when the server has an LLM configured; with no LLM the server is semantic-search-only and the Ask overlay stays hidden.
    • Automatic sync — the TUI pushes note content to the server in the background (every few seconds) and keeps it reconciled with the vault. The footer shows the connection state: rag: online, rag: syncing, rag: offline, or rag: not configured.
    • Multi-vault — one server hosts many vaults at once; each vault is its own isolated collection.
    • Web admin UI — the server serves a small dashboard at its root URL: running configuration, per-vault collections, indexing/answer jobs, a test-query box, and a config editor.

    The server is push-only: it never reads your notes from disk. Kimün sends note content to it, and the server stores only embeddings (and answers queries). Everything — embeddings, vector store, optionally the LLM — can run locally, so your notes never have to leave your machine.

    Installing the server 

    The server is currently installed with Cargo only (it is not on crates.io and there are no prebuilt binaries yet), so you need a Rust toolchain:

    cargo install --git https://github.com/nico2sh/kimun kimun_server

    This builds and installs the kimun-server binary into ~/.cargo/bin.

    Running the server 

    Start with working local defaults — embedded SQLite vector store plus a local embedding model, no config file needed:

    kimun-server --default-config

    The first run downloads the embedding model (a few hundred MB). Once it is up, open http://127.0.0.1:7573/ for the web UI.

    The config file lives at ~/.config/kimun/server.toml (--default-config creates it if missing). Edit it — or use the web UI's Config page — to choose:

    • Embedder — local fastembed models (no network), or an external Ollama / OpenAI-compatible embeddings endpoint.
    • Vector store — embedded SQLite (zero setup, the default) or a standalone Qdrant server.
    • LLM for Ask — Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, or any local OpenAI-compatible endpoint (Ollama, llama.cpp, …). Leave unset for a semantic-search-only server.
    • Auth — an optional bearer token; required in practice if the server binds beyond 127.0.0.1.

    Config edits from the web UI are written to the file and applied on the next restart. See the server README for the full configuration and API reference.

    # common flags
kimun-server --config /path/to/server.toml   # explicit config file
kimun-server --host 0.0.0.0 --port 7573      # override the bind address

    Connecting Kimün to the server 

    Two ways:

    Preferences — open Preferences (Ctrl+,), pick the Server section, and enter the server address (URL including port). When the field is empty, the placeholder shows the default local address, http://localhost:7573. Leave it empty to keep the feature off.

    Config file — set the URL in the [global] section of Kimün's config.toml:

    [global]
kimun_server_url = "http://localhost:7573"
# only if the server has an [auth] token configured:
kimun_server_token = "your-token"

    The server connection is global — every workspace syncs to the same server, each into its own collection.

    Once configured, Kimün probes the server, starts syncing, and the footer shows the connection status. The SEM drawer view appears, and F6 opens Ask when the server has an LLM.

    A note on security 

    The server speaks plain HTTP and is meant for a trusted network. If you expose it beyond 127.0.0.1, set an [auth] token and put a TLS-terminating reverse proxy in front of it, then point kimun_server_url at the proxy's https:// address. Details in the server README.