First Run & Vault Setup

What happens the first time you open memrynote: choosing a vault location, setting a passphrase, and saving the recovery phrase.

The whole flow takes about two minutes. The most important step is saving the recovery phrase — read on for why.

Welcome Overlay

A short overlay appears the very first time. It explains the local-first model: your data lives on your device first, and sync (if you turn it on) is end-to-end encrypted.

Click Get started.

Choosing a Vault

The vault is a folder of Markdown files on disk. memrynote keeps its databases, attachments, and CRDT state in a hidden .memry folder inside it.

The welcome screen offers three ways in:

Option	Shortcut	What it does
Create new vault	⌘+N	Enter a name and a location (default ~/Documents/Memry). memrynote creates the folder <location>/<name> and opens it. An existing folder is never reused silently.
Open folder as vault	⌘+O	Pick a folder of Markdown files you already keep. Your files stay as they are.
Open from Memrynote Sync	⌘+L	Sign in (or create an account), unlock with your recovery phrase or a linked device, then pick one vault from your account to download.

On Windows and Linux the shortcuts use Ctrl.

If Create new vault finds a folder with that name already at the location, it offers to open that folder as a vault instead.

Open from Memrynote Sync lists your account's vaults by name. Choose one and where it should be downloaded; a vault that is already on this computer opens its local copy. The other vaults stay in your account and can be downloaded later from the vault switcher. A new account with no vaults continues to Create new vault.

Pick a location of your own if you want to:

• Sync the vault itself with iCloud / Dropbox (not recommended — sync conflicts with memrynote's own sync; use memrynote sync instead)
• Place it on a specific drive
• Keep it in a folder you back up separately

You can move the vault later from Settings → Vault.

Setting a Passphrase

Your passphrase encrypts the vault's wrapping key locally and is required at every sign-in.

Pick something:

• Long (passphrases > passwords; consider four random words)
• Memorable to you
• Not used anywhere else

memrynote hashes the passphrase with Argon2id + a per-vault salt to derive the wrapping key. The passphrase itself never leaves your device.

You'll be asked to confirm by re-entering it.

Recovery Phrase

This is the most important step.

memrynote generates a list of words derived from the same vault entropy. The phrase is the only way to decrypt your data if you:

• Forget your passphrase
• Lose every device that has the vault key sealed for it

Save it somewhere durable:

• A password manager (recommended)
• Written down in a safe place
• Printed and stored physically

Do not screenshot it on a synced phone, email it, or paste it in a notes app.

After showing the phrase, memrynote asks you to re-enter a few specific words to confirm you've saved it. This step exists to prevent accidental loss.

If you close Settings during this confirmation step, signup stays incomplete. Reopen Settings → Account to resume recovery confirmation before sync starts.

Email & OTP (Optional, for Sync)

If you want sync, memrynote asks for an email and verifies it with a six-digit one-time code.

The code arrives from MemryNote (noreply@memrynote.com) with the subject "Your MemryNote verification code". If it doesn't show up within a minute or two, check your spam folder.

You can skip sync entirely — choose Continue without sync to stay fully local. You can enable sync later from Settings → Account.

What Gets Created

After setup completes, your vault directory looks like this:

<vault>/
├─ data.db              # primary SQLite database
├─ data.db-wal
├─ index.db             # search / graph / embedding index
├─ index.db-wal
├─ attachments/         # file payloads
├─ leveldb/             # y-leveldb store for Yjs CRDT state
└─ vault.json           # public metadata (version, salt — not the key)

All the heavy data is encrypted at rest with the vault key. The salt and version metadata are not sensitive.

Onboarding Tour

After setup, memrynote shows a brief in-app tour pointing out the sidebar, tabs, and search. Click through or skip — you can revisit it via the keyboard shortcuts dialog.

The tour counts as seen once you finish it, skip it, or close it. If it never got that far — you quit the app while the tour was still on screen — it is not counted, and memrynote offers it again on the next launch. Either way it opens the right-hand Day Panel so the calendar and Agent steps have something to point at, and leaves it open afterwards.

The record that you have seen the tour is saved in the vault's own settings, so it survives app updates and reinstalls. The tour is also skipped for any vault that already holds notes, because that vault is not new.

Next Steps

• Take a Tour of memrynote
• Open the User Guide and start with Notes
• If you set up sync, link another device