The index and the graph

Weave reads what you have already written and builds one index across your notes, your snippets and your clipboard history. It is what makes search find things by meaning rather than by the exact words you typed, and it is what draws the graph.

Turning Weave on

The graph is always on. It draws the links, tags and folders in your notes, which is a directory walk: no model, no download, nothing to switch on.

Weave is the switch, in Settings → Weave, and it is off until you turn it on. It adds meaning on top: semantic search in the All tab and the "similar" connections in the graph. This needs a small language model, downloaded once, in the app, and only after you turn it on. The size is shown before anything starts. Nothing is bundled and nothing downloads until you ask for it. The graph offers it too, on a card, after you have opened and closed the graph a couple of times.

What Weave needs, and how you can tell

Weave is on when the switch is on, and useful once two more things have happened: the model is on this Mac, and the index has been built. Turning it on asks for the download right there, with the size, and one yes downloads and builds; if the model is already here the build starts on its own. While it runs, the graph shows a small pill at the top right, Indexing 40%, and the index card in Settings shows a ring filling up. When it finishes, a toast says so, with a button to open the graph.

If the graph shows Not indexed or Model needed instead, click the pill, or the themes button beside it, and a card says which and carries the fix: download and build, build, or resume a pass you paused. The index card in Settings says the same thing in the same words. Resume only appears after you pressed Pause; a fresh install says Build.

Two more switches sit under it, separate on purpose. Group by theme sorts your notes, snippets and clips into themes by meaning and colors the graph by group; it runs on this Mac and needs no AI provider. Name the themes asks the AI provider you chose to put a name on each group. That is the one part of Weave that can send anything anywhere: a sample of titles per theme, only while naming is on, and only to a remote provider if that is the one you picked.

Turning Weave off asks whether to keep the index or delete it, with the disk space it is using, so the answer is yours rather than ours. Either way the inferred "similar" connections stop being drawn immediately: keeping the index means keeping the work so switching back on is instant, not carrying on making guesses you switched off.

What gets indexed

Notes and snippets are on by default. Clipboard history is off, because indexing everything you have ever copied changes what the app retains and that is your call to make. Every vault you have connected is indexed, into one graph.

The graph

Open it with `, or from the icon in the bottom left bar. That is the whole picture: every note, snippet and clip that is connected to anything.

The graph icon in the note editor toolbar is the other way in, and it means something different: this note and what it connects to. The note you came from is ringed in orange and named in a bar at the top of the canvas, and that bar is also the way back up to the whole graph.

Click a node to highlight it and everything it touches, double-click to open it, drag to pin it in place, scroll to zoom. The switches at the top left decide what the graph is built from, with a live count beside each: notes, snippets and clips, and Show vaults opens a row per vault so you can drop one out of the picture. The graph follows the app's light or dark theme until you override it, and then it keeps your choice.

Themes

With Weave on and Group by theme switched on in Settings, the Show themes button in the graph's toolbar colors the board by what things are about, each theme as its own region with a label. Click a label to go into that theme and see only what belongs to it; the bar at the top names where you are and is the way back out, as is clicking the canvas outside any theme or pressing Escape.

The grouping is arithmetic over the index and never leaves this Mac. The labels are the only part that can: with Name the themes on, a handful of titles per theme go to the AI provider you chose, and to nowhere at all if that provider runs locally. Without it the themes are still drawn and colored, just not named.