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What Is the Linkly AI Space

The Linkly AI Space is an ordinary folder the app creates on your computer. The app describes it like this:
The default home for your materials. Notes and clippings are kept here, and you can add more of your own.
The idea is simple: whenever the app needs to write something to disk, this is where it writes by default. The notes you jot down in the app, the web pages you save with the browser extension, and the sample documents that ship with the installer all land here. It’s a plain directory with no proprietary format: open it in Finder or File Explorer, edit the files with any editor, run grep over it, or copy the whole thing somewhere else.
You’ll see three different spellings in three different places. They all refer to the same thing and none of them contradicts the others:
  • The interface calls it Linkly AI Space (on the Settings → General page, just above App Data)
  • The directory on disk is named LinklyAI (no space)
  • The sample documents inside it live in Linkly_AI_Examples

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Where It Lives on Disk

The default location is inside your user home directory:
That’s the home directory, not the Documents folder. Plenty of people go looking in Documents out of habit and come up empty. On macOS, press ⌘⇧H in Finder to jump straight to your home directory.
On Windows, the path shown under Settings → General uses forward slashes, for example C:/Users/xxx/LinklyAI — the app normalizes paths internally. That’s expected, and it’s the same directory File Explorer shows as C:\Users\xxx\LinklyAI.
To open it quickly: Settings → General → Linkly AI Space → Open takes you straight there in your system file manager. There’s usually a shortcut on your desktop as well.

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What’s Inside

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Notes — your card notes

Every card note you write in the app is one .md file here, filed into a subfolder per UTC month. Filename rules, YAML front matter fields, and what to watch for when you open them in an external editor are all covered in Using Notes.

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Clips — web clippings

Pages saved with the browser extension land here, one folder per clip, containing the Markdown body and the images from the page.

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Linkly_AI_Examples — sample documents

A batch of public-domain texts that ships with the installer: 151 Markdown files, about 11.9 MB unpacked. As soon as the first-run wizard opens, the app unpacks and indexes them in the background, so you have something to search — and something to try search and Q&A on — the moment you’re set up.
Once you’ve found your footing, you can delete the whole Linkly_AI_Examples/ folder. Nothing breaks, and the matching entries clear out of the index on their own. If you’d just rather not see it in search results, you can also right-click it in the library and choose Add exclusion rule….
Clips/, Notes/, and Canvas/ are re-created at every launch if they’re missing — delete them by hand and they’ll be back next time you start the app (though their contents won’t be). Linkly_AI_Examples/ is unpacked exactly once, during first-run onboarding; delete it and it’s gone for good.

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How It Gets Indexed

The contents of this folder are searchable not because the folder gets special treatment, but because: The first-run onboarding flow adds it to your watched folders automatically. In other words, it is just an ordinary watched folder, on exactly the same footing as the Documents or project directories you add later. The layered indexing logic is the same as for any other folder — see Index Settings. The one difference is that its notes, clips and canvases are always indexed: the file type switches and exclusion rules under Rules don’t apply to those three folders, and you can’t write exclusion rules for them. In the folder list in the left column of the main window’s Library, it is always pinned first and shown as Linkly AI Space. Under Manage sources its description reads Linkly AI Space, the default library, and it can’t be removed: other folders have Remove at the end of their row; this one doesn’t.
Long-time users upgrading directly from a version earlier than 0.6 see the onboarding flow again, so this holds for them too.

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Changing the Location

Short on space in your home directory, or want the folder on a different drive? Use the Linkly AI Space row on the Settings → General page (just above App Data). On its right are three buttons: Open, plus two icon buttons whose tooltips read Change and Restore Default.
This is not a migration. The app does not move any of your files.The confirmation dialog spells it out:
Existing files won’t be moved — they stay where they are and remain indexed. This only changes where new files are stored from now on.
And so does the message once it succeeds:
Folder location updated. Existing files stay at the old location and are not moved automatically.
Behind the scenes it does exactly two things: creates an empty directory at the new location and points the configuration at it. Nothing is copied, moved, or deleted, no restart is required, and it completes in a second.
1

Open Settings → General

Find the Linkly AI Space row; the current path is displayed there.
2

Click Change and confirm

Read the line in the confirmation dialog, then click Continue.
3

Pick a parent directory

The picker selects the parent directory, not the space directory itself. Pick ~/Documents and you get ~/Documents/LinklyAI; pick the root of an external drive and you get /Volumes/XXX/LinklyAI.The one exception: if you select a directory that is itself named LinklyAI, the app uses it as-is rather than nesting another level into LinklyAI/LinklyAI.
Once you’ve picked it, the new directory is created and the configuration takes effect immediately.
4

Move your old files across yourself (if you want to)

The app won’t do it for you. To keep your existing notes and clippings alongside the new location, copy Notes/, Clips/, and anything else over in your file manager.
5

Decide what to do about the old location's indexing

See the note below.
The old path stays in the watched list and keeps being indexed.Most people expect that after the change only the new location is indexed. In reality both locations are — not a single document at the old location disappears from your search results.That’s good news when you only wanted a new home for new material (nothing old gets lost), but if your intention was to move the folder away entirely, you need to remove the old path yourself under Library → Manage sources.
Side effect: the desktop shortcut is repointed at the new location. Restore Default behaves just like Change, except that the target is fixed to LinklyAI in your home directory: it shows the same confirmation dialog first, and it doesn’t move data either.
Changing the location has been available since v0.8.0. On earlier versions, upgrade first.

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Desktop Shortcut

When first-run onboarding finishes, the app creates a shortcut named LinklyAI on your system desktop that points at the Linkly AI Space folder — not at the application itself, so opening it takes you to the folder rather than launching the app.
There’s no toggle in the interface to switch it off. The only user-facing way to get rid of it is to delete the shortcut from your desktop — once deleted, it won’t be created again.The single exception is changing the space location: that operation unconditionally re-creates a shortcut pointing at the new location.
If your desktop already had a file or folder called LinklyAI that the app didn’t create, the app will never overwrite it.

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It’s Not the Same as App Data

This is the easiest pair of concepts to confuse. The Linkly AI Space holds your content; App Data holds the app’s internal data:

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Where the Application Log Lives

The log file is logs/app.log, inside the App Data directory. There are two ways to open the log folder:
  • Click Open next to App Data under Settings → General, then step into the logs/ subfolder
  • Click Send in the Send diagnostic log row under Settings → About; the dialog that opens has Open log folder in its bottom-left corner
Once app.log exceeds 10 MB it is truncated, keeping only the last 5 MB. So when you hit a problem you want to report to us, the right order is grab a copy of the current log first, then reproduce the problem — do it the other way round and the early, decisive clues have very likely been cut away.

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What Happens If You Delete or Move It Manually

Don’t delete or move this folder from your file manager. Here’s what actually happens in each case.
The right way to relocate it:
1

Use Change in Settings first

Under Settings → General → Linkly AI Space, click Change, confirm, and pick the new parent directory.
2

Then copy the old files across yourself

Copy the contents of the old directory to the new one in your file manager. Copy rather than cut — delete the original only once you’ve confirmed everything is fine.
3

Finally, decide the old path's fate

To keep the old location searchable, do nothing. To retire it, remove the old path under Library → Manage sources.

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FAQ

You can, but there’s no official guarantee. The app performs no cloud-drive detection on this folder and gives you no hint or warning — if you put it there, it’s there, and nothing pops up when things go wrong.Indexing does apply some general protections against cloud drives, which take the edge off:
  • Cloud placeholder files that haven’t been downloaded locally are skipped (search results label them Not indexed · cloud placeholder, and they’re re-indexed automatically once downloaded)
  • Transient deletions caused by sync churn get a 60-second settling window, so a single hiccup doesn’t evict a document from the index
  • Sync metadata directories like #recycle and @eaDir are ignored
Even so, on-demand downloads, conflict copies, and frequent rewrites can keep the index churning. If all you want is to share documents across devices, adding the cloud folder as an ordinary watched folder (Library → Add folder) is usually safer than moving the whole space into a cloud drive.
No. It does exactly two things: create a directory at the new location, and point the configuration at it. Not a single existing file is touched — they stay where they are and stay indexed.The line in the confirmation dialog about existing files not being moved isn’t a disclaimer, it’s an accurate description of the behavior. To get your old files across, copy them yourself in your file manager.And because it never moves data, there is no such thing as a migration that fails or gets interrupted halfway — the operation completes in a second.
Yes. The old path stays in the watched list and keeps being indexed, so content in both locations is within search range.That’s usually a good thing (old material doesn’t vanish on you), but if you really meant to relocate for good, remove the old path yourself under Library → Manage sources.
Yes. Linkly_AI_Examples/ is public-domain text in plain Markdown; deleting it affects nothing, and the matching index entries are cleaned up automatically.Do keep in mind that it’s unpacked only once, during first-run onboarding — once deleted it won’t come back, so make a copy first if you want to keep it around.
Just delete it — it won’t be created again. There’s no toggle for it in the interface.The only thing that brings it back is changing the space location — that step unconditionally re-creates a shortcut pointing at the new location.
Two cases:
  • You haven’t restarted the app yet: the files are gone (notes and clippings were in there), but the index is still intact. If you have Time Machine or File History, restore the directory from backup right away, then restart the app.
  • You’ve already restarted: the app re-created an empty directory, the scan found it empty, and the previous documents were purged from the index after about 60 seconds. At this point only a system backup can bring them back.
The app has no trash and no backup mechanism of its own. This folder holds your real files — treat it the way you’d treat any other folder that matters.
At logs/app.log inside the App Data directory — note that it’s not in the Linkly AI Space.To get there: Settings → General → App Data → Open, then step into the logs/ subfolder. Alternatively, click Send in the Send diagnostic log row under Settings → About, then click Open log folder in the dialog that opens.Once app.log exceeds 10 MB it is truncated, keeping only the last 5 MB, so when reporting a problem please grab the log first, then reproduce.

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Further reading