Ask Octarine

Ask Octarine is the workspace-level AI chat. Use it when the answer is probably somewhere in your notes, but you do not want to manually search, open five files, and stitch the story together yourself.

What It Does

Ask Octarine can answer questions, summarize projects, find old decisions, compare notes, help you create new writing from what already exists in your workspace, and make approved changes to your files.

With a tool-capable model, Ask Octarine now works more like a small research agent. It can search your notes, read the most relevant ones, follow backlinks and wikilinks, inspect tags, list folders, and then answer from what it found. This is different from a simple one-shot search: it can take multiple steps when the question needs it.

For example:

• "What did I decide about pricing in the last two months?"
• "Summarize everything related to the mobile redesign."
• "Find notes that mention the export bug and tell me the current status."
• "Create a brief from @Projects/Website and @Meetings/June."
• "What open threads did I leave in Daily Desk last week?"

Ask Octarine requires a model that supports tool calling. Octarine uses capability data from models.dev and shows only tool-capable models in the picker.

First Setup

The first time you use Ask Octarine, Octarine downloads a local embedding model. Embeddings make your notes searchable by meaning, and they run on your device.

• MiniLM L6 v2 is the default model. It is smaller, faster, and about 90MB.
• Nomic Embed v1.5 is the higher-quality option. It is about 140MB and takes a little more time and resources to index.
• Your notes are indexed locally.
• New, renamed, moved, edited, or deleted notes are re-indexed automatically.
• Only your actual chat query and the relevant note content are sent to your selected AI provider.

To keep the whole flow local, use a local provider such as Ollama or LM Studio.

Opening Ask Octarine

Click the Ask Octarine button in the top-right header, press Cmd/Ctrl + O, or use Cmd/Ctrl + K -> Ask Octarine. The first launch opens a floating panel; after that, the header button and shortcut reopen the presentation you used most recently.

Use the view control in the chat header to move the current conversation between:

• Floating — a resizable panel over the workspace.
• Sidebar — a docked panel beside the editor.
• Tab — a normal workspace tab that can be moved into a split pane.

Drag the floating panel by empty space in its header to move it horizontally. It snaps to the left, center, or right of the window, and Octarine remembers the position.

Moving a conversation changes where it is displayed without starting a new chat. Floating and sidebar views include a searchable history control. The tab view also provides the full save-to-note and delete-chat actions.

If indexing is still running, the prompt box shows progress. You can start asking once the workspace is ready.

Excluding Notes And Folders

Use Ask Octarine exclusions when some workspace content should stay out of AI search. Excluded notes and folders are not indexed by Ask Octarine and will not appear as @ context suggestions.

Open Settings -> AI -> Ignored, then add the folders or notes you want Ask Octarine to skip. Removing an item from the ignored list makes it available again.

When anything is ignored, the prompt box shows an N ignored shortcut. Click it to jump back to the exclusions settings.

Exclusions are saved in a .octarineignore file at the root of the workspace, with one path per line. You can manage the list from settings, or edit the file directly if you prefer.

For example:

# Ask Octarine exclusions
Private
Research/Unpublished.md
.templates

Ignoring a folder excludes everything inside it. This applies to workspace search, similar note lookup, backlinks, wikilink expansion, note outlines, and direct note reads inside Ask Octarine.

Controlling Context

Ask Octarine can search the whole workspace, but you can narrow it when you already know where the answer should come from.

Type @ in the prompt box to add context. The menu is grouped in this order:

• Sources for connected integrations such as Linear, GitHub, or Notion.
• Dates (shown under its own heading when Sources is present) for created or modified date filters and Daily Desk ranges, useful for questions about a week, month, trip, sprint, or other stretch of days.
• Workspace for your Templates and Inbox.
• Notes for exact source material. Before you type, this group lists your recently viewed notes.
• Folders for projects, areas, or archives.
• Skills for reusable instructions, formats, or review lenses.

You can combine several contexts in one prompt. For instance, ask it to compare one folder with another, or use a Daily Desk range plus a project folder so the answer is both time-aware and topic-aware.

Opening Ask Octarine does not attach the note you are viewing. When a note is open, the prompt box shows Add current note as context; click it to include that note. The added note appears above the prompt box. Switching to another note clears it, so each note is added only when you choose to.

To attach a passage directly from the editor, select it and choose Add to Ask Octarine in the Bubble Menu. The selection is added to the current chat draft as a snapshot and remains attached while you move between Ask Octarine presentations.

Skills behave a little differently from notes and folders: they guide how Ask Octarine should work, while the other mentions tell it what material to use. See Skills for setup and examples.

Octarine is language agnostic. Ask in the language you prefer, and it will answer in the same language.

Integrations

Connect services such as Linear, GitHub, and Notion in Settings -> Integrations, then use Sources in the prompt box to choose which ones Ask Octarine can call in this workspace. See Integrations for setup and privacy details.

Web Search

If the selected model supports it, you can turn on web search from the globe icon in the prompt box.

Use web search when your notes are the starting point but not the whole answer: checking current facts, filling in public context around a saved link, or comparing your own notes with something that has changed since you wrote them.

When web search is unavailable for the selected model, the toggle is disabled.

Reading The Answer

Agent answers may include the notes it used as clickable wikilinks. The chat also keeps a reference list so you can inspect the source material yourself.

Each message keeps its own context, model, and references. That means one chat can include a broad workspace question, a follow-up narrowed to a folder, and then a third question using a different model without losing track of what happened.

You can copy responses as Markdown or plain text. You can also save the whole chat to a note from the chat breadcrumb; Octarine writes your prompts as blockquotes and separates each exchange with a divider.

Approved Workspace Changes

Ask Octarine can create notes and folders, replace the content of an existing note, and move notes or folders when you ask it to change the workspace.

Before the first write in a turn, Octarine pauses and shows the proposed workspace changes. Review the list, then choose Allow or Reject. Your decision applies only to that turn. Read-only research does not need approval, and ignored or hidden paths remain unavailable to the Agent.

Completed writes appear in the answer with an Undo or Undo all action. Octarine keeps reversible Agent changes for 30 days, and you can also ask it to list or undo recent changes. An undo can fail if the affected file has changed since the Agent wrote it, which protects newer edits from being overwritten.

Editing Prompts

Click any previous prompt to edit it. Octarine reopens the text with the same @ mentions, then regenerates the answer from the updated request.

This is especially useful when the first answer was close but you want to add a missing folder, tighten the date range, or ask for a different format.

Drafts And History

History is grouped by relative date, such as Today, Yesterday, 2d ago, and 1w ago. Saved chats keep their references, so you can return to an answer and still see what it was based on.

Picking A Model

Ask Octarine lists only models that support tool calling. You can look up a model in the models.dev model database and check its Tool Call capability if an expected model does not appear.

Use lighter models for quick summaries and straightforward lookup. Use stronger models when the question spans many notes, asks for synthesis, or needs careful reasoning across projects.

Quick Answers