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ClioDeck Wiki

ClioDeck is an Electron + React + TypeScript desktop app for historians, covering the full research cycle explore → brainstorm → write → export. Local-first, RAG-powered, with Zotero / Tropy / Obsidian integrations and full MCP support (client + server).

This wiki is the user-facing reference. For internal engineering notes, see docs/ in the repository.

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Getting Started

• ClioDeck Installation (overview)
• Installation — Linux
• Installation — macOS
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Word Templates

User Guides

Sources & integrations

• Zotero Integration Guide — bibliography sync, PDF download, batch indexing.
• Tropy Integration Guide — primary sources (archives), OCR, transcription.
• Obsidian Vault Guide (new in RC2) — point ClioDeck at an Obsidian vault folder and use it as a RAG source.
• Archive Connectors Guide (new in RC2) — Gallica (BnF), HAL (CCSD), Europeana.

Working with the corpus

• Embedded LLM Guide — running models locally via Ollama or the bundled llama.cpp.
• Corpus Analysis Guide — knowledge graph, textometrics, similarity finder.
• Journal and History — session tracking and chat history.
• Export Presentations — PDF/Word export.

Chat modes & extensibility (new in RC2)

• Brainstorm Mode Guide — the chat mode that absorbed ClioBrain. Agent loop, MCP tools, .cliohints.
• MCP Integration Guide — both directions: external MCP servers consumed from ClioDeck, and ClioDeck's own MCP server exposed to Claude Desktop / Claude Code.

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Technical

• Technical Architecture
• Build and Deployment Guide
• i18n Migration Report
• Logging System
• Word Export Implementation

Feature notes

• Bibliography Statistics
• BibTeX Export
• Embedding Strategy
• Orphan PDF Cleanup
• Similarity Finder
• Tags & Metadata
• Unified Bibliography
• Zotero Sync

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Releases

• RC2 Release Notes — current (ClioBrain fusion, MCP, archive connectors, Obsidian vault).
• Archive: BETA 2 Release Notes, Implementation Plan v1.0.

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Ethics

• Ethics
• Environmental Cost of AI-Assisted Development