Vaults and projects
Grove opens a vault — a plain folder of notes, exactly like an Obsidian vault — and lets you connect one or more code repos to it as projects. Your notes are the constant; the repos you work on come and go. You can also run a vault with no repo at all, as a standalone agentic notes app.
The vault
Point Grove at any notes folder and it opens as your vault: Markdown on disk, with [[wikilinks]], backlinks, and live directive panels. Grove keeps its bookkeeping in a hidden .grove/ directory inside the vault, and hides its internals (worktrees, chat transcripts) behind dot-folders — so the same folder still opens cleanly in Obsidian.
If you already keep an Obsidian vault, just open it. Nothing is converted; notes stay plain Markdown either way. If the vault is git-tracked, add .grove/ to its .gitignore.
You can also import notes: drag a folder (or files) from Finder onto the sidebar and Grove copies them in, keeping filenames so your [[links]] still resolve.
Connecting projects
A project is a code repo linked to the vault. Connect one when you want to read its code, run agents against it, or spin up workspaces:
- Settings → Projects is the home for linking and unlinking repos: choose a repo folder and it joins the vault as a project, named after the repo.
- You'll also be prompted to pick or create a project the first time you create a workspace.
- Project folders are marked in the sidebar with a package icon. Notes and workspaces nested under a project belong to it, so a note's code links resolve against the right repo.
The current project
- Switch projects from the breadcrumb in the top bar — it lists every project in the vault. Selecting one re-roots the source view on that repo.
- The project panel is the source file tree for the current project. Toggle it with
Cmd+Shift+B; a vault with no project simply hides it. - The current project scopes
Cmd+P(file palette) andCmd+Shift+F(project search).
Because notes live in the vault rather than in any one repo, a single note can reference code across several connected projects — and your writing outlives any individual checkout.
Workspaces branch off a project
When you create a workspace, Grove branches a git worktree off that project's repo. Each workspace is isolated in its own worktree, and its notes live in the vault next to it — so a fleet of agents works in parallel across your projects without colliding, while the context that drives them stays in one place.
Publishing from a vault
Any note or folder in the vault can be published as a hosted, read-only page — an unlisted link, or gated to your GitHub org or Google Workspace — for free. Publishing rides on the vault, not on a particular repo.