Local Paths and Vaults

The Local Paths view enables direct, zero-clone monitoring of local folders residing on the host server, such as Obsidian knowledge vaults, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), monorepos, and scratch directories.

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Registering a Monitored Local Path

Follow these steps to register a host directory:

1. Navigate to the Local Paths tab in the dashboard.
2. Click + Add Local Path.
3. Target Directory: Enter the absolute filesystem path (e.g. /containers/dev/vaults/obsidian or /home/user/workspace/docs).
4. Category Override: Assign a category name (e.g. architecture, notes, or runbooks) to organize search boundaries.
5. Recursive Toggle:
   • Enabled: Automatically traverses and indexes all nested subfolders.
   • Disabled: Indexes only files located in the root directory.
6. Click Register Path.

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File Watching & Incremental Ingestion

• Watchdog Daemon: Monitored paths are watched by an in-memory file observer daemon.
• Incremental Diffing: When files are modified, created, or deleted, ContextCortex re-indexes only the changed files rather than re-scanning the entire folder.
• ADR Synchronization: Markdown files located in docs/adr/, docs/decisions/, or .adr/ are automatically parsed into the structured Architectural Decision Records registry.

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Next Steps

• Learn about file uploads and PDF handling in Managed Local Storage and PDF Ingestion.
• Configure vector database engines and credentials in System Settings and Model Discovery.