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This quick start guide will help you build your first AI-ready local knowledge base with Linkly AI in just a few minutes, and learn the basic usage.

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Before You Begin

Linkly AI includes the following core applications and capabilities:

Linkly AI Desktop

The desktop application (referred to as Linkly AI). After installation, it automatically indexes documents and provides search, outline, and reading tools.

Linkly AI CLI

A command-line tool that connects to your Linkly AI app via Bash and invokes its tools. Ideal for AI Agent usage.

MCP Server

An open protocol for Agents to retrieve context. The MCP service starts automatically after installing Linkly AI. Ideal for AI Agent invocation.

linkly-ai-skills

Official Agent Skills that guide Agents on how to connect and use Linkly AI’s tool services. Strongly recommended.

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Step 1: Install Linkly AI

Go to the official download page and select the version for your operating system:

Download Linkly AI

Choose the version for your operating system
 Then double-click the installer. Installation steps for each platform:
1

Open the installer

Double-click the downloaded .dmg file to mount the disk image
2

Drag to Applications

Drag the LinklyAI icon into the Applications folder
3

Launch the app

Find LinklyAI in Launchpad or the Applications folder in Finder, and double-click to launch

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Step 2: Initialize Linkly AI

When you first launch Linkly AI, a setup wizard will appear to help you complete 3 initialization steps:
1

Choose directories to index

Select the document directories you want Linkly AI to index:
  • My Documents: Only index documents under ~/Documents or the My Documents directory
  • Entire Computer: Scan all accessible documents for the widest coverage (requires authorization)
  • Custom Folder: Manually select a specific folder
2

Check access permissions

The system will automatically check access permissions for the selected folder. If permissions are insufficient (common on macOS), go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access, add Linkly AI, then restart the app.
3

Connect your AI tools

Add Linkly AI’s MCP service to your frequently used AI tools for intelligent document search.

We recommend using Skills to assist with integration — it’s the simplest approach. Just copy the following prompt to your AI assistant and follow the instructions to complete both tool and Skills integration:

Please install Agent Skill linkly-ai-skills and...

You can also manually integrate the MCP tools, but we still recommend installing Skills for a better experience:
Run in your terminal:
claude mcp add --transport http linkly-ai http://127.0.0.1:606060/mcp
606060 is the default port for Linkly AI’s MCP service. If you can’t connect, check the actual port number in the app settings.

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Step 3: First Use

After launch, Linkly AI will immediately start indexing your documents and continuously monitor for changes. Full indexing will complete within a few minutes to tens of minutes (depending on the number of documents and machine performance).
The first launch requires downloading a model file of approximately 100MB, which may take a few minutes to tens of minutes, but this does not affect keyword search functionality.Once the download is complete and all indexing is finished, natural language search will become available.
You have two ways to use Linkly AI:

Search documents with the Launcher

You can click the app icon (L Logo) in the system tray, or use the global shortcut CMD/Ctrl + Shift + L to open the search launcher window. Enter keywords or descriptive language to find target documents.You can further preview, view metadata, open documents, copy links, and more. For detailed usage, see the Full-Text Search Launcher documentation.

Use with AI Agents

This is our more recommended approach — you’ll enjoy an unprecedented interactive experience and research efficiency.After integrating with your AI assistant or installing Skills, append use linkly-ai after any prompt to actively leverage Linkly AI’s powerful search capabilities.