Your first conversation

Vault Operator is an agent that reads, writes, and searches your vault. A few concepts help before you start.

Default agent

Vault Operator ships with one built-in agent, called Default agent (since 2026-05-18). It can read, write, edit, create, and delete files in your vault. There is no separate read-only mode and the agent does not switch behaviour mid-conversation.

If you want read-only behaviour, you have two options:

• Open Settings > Vault Operator > Agents > Auto-approve and set everything to "ask every time". The agent then needs an explicit click before any write.
• Open Settings > Vault Operator > Agents > Agents and create a Custom Agent that excludes the edit, vault, web, agent, mcp, and skill tool groups. The custom agent can then only use the read group.

Use approvals if you want safety

The chat header has no mode switcher; agents are picked from the agent selector instead. If you want to explore without any risk of changes, keep the approval prompts on so every write needs an explicit click.

Prefer to stay in the note?

Press Cmd+Shift+I (Ctrl+Shift+I on Windows and Linux), or right-click the selection and choose Inline AI chat, to open the inline panel. It runs the same agent loop. See guides/inline-chat for details.

Context: what the agent knows

The agent sees:

• Your message and the conversation history
• The active note (if "Auto-add active note as context" is enabled in Settings > Vault Operator > Advanced > Interface)
• Attached files (drag & drop or click the paperclip icon)
• @-mentioned files (type @ in the chat to search your vault)
• Its memory of past conversations (if memory is enabled)

It does not read your entire vault upfront. It searches and reads files on demand via tools.

The activity block

When the agent works, an expandable activity block appears below the response. It shows every tool call in real time:

• Tool name (e.g., read_file, search_files, semantic_search)
• Key parameters (e.g., the file path or search query)
• Result (expand to see details)
• Diff badge for write operations: +3 / -1 lines changed

Click the activity block to expand or collapse it.

Approvals

By default, the agent asks for your approval before any write operation. An approval card appears showing exactly what the agent wants to do:

• Write file: shows the full content
• Edit file: shows the diff
• Delete file: shows which file
• Move file: shows source and destination

Click "Allow once" to approve, or "Always allow" to auto-approve that category.

Auto-approve with care

Enabling auto-approve for writes means the agent acts without asking. The checkpoint system lets you undo, but review what changed after each task.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Enter	Send message (default).
Ctrl/Cmd+Enter	Send message when "Send with Enter" is turned off in settings.
Shift+Enter	New line
/	Open workflow/prompt picker
@	Open file mention picker
Mod+Shift+I	Open inline AI chat

Tips for better results

Be specific. "Summarize the meeting notes from March" works better than "summarize my notes."

Use @filename to point the agent at specific notes instead of hoping it finds them.

The activity block shows exactly what the agent did, which is useful for learning how it works and for catching mistakes when it goes sideways.

For broad questions like "What do I know about X?", just ask. The agent will run a semantic search on the vault itself.

Next steps

The natural next tutorial is Search your vault by meaning, which gets semantic search running. After that, Capture a PDF with /ingest and Sense-making with /ingest-deep cover the two ingest paths.

For deeper references: Choosing a model for provider comparisons, Chat interface for the full feature set, and Knowledge discovery for the full search and graph story.

If a tool call fails or the agent gets stuck, the Troubleshooting page covers the common cases.