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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.

RC3 is out. The editor was rebuilt on CodeMirror 6, book projects are now written in chapters, and the assistant can read your own manuscript. See the RC3 Release Notes.

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Getting Started

• ClioDeck Installation (overview)
• Installation — Linux
• Installation — macOS
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Features — the full feature list.

Writing (new section in RC3)

• The Editor — live markdown rendering, footnotes, citations, front matter, AI proposals.
• Books and Chapters — multi-file manuscripts, chapter navigator, outline, book-wide tools, book settings.
• Export Guide — PDF, Word, presentations (reveal.js and Beamer), and book scope.
• 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 — point ClioDeck at an Obsidian vault folder and use it as a RAG source.
• Archive Connectors Guide — 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 — research journal, chat history, and the separate AI usage journal.

The assistant & extensibility

• Brainstorm Mode Guide — the assistant: agent loop, MCP tools, project context. Since RC3 it is the same component wherever you open it in the app.
• 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

• RC3 Release Notes — current (new editor, books in chapters, unified assistant, manuscript as a RAG corpus, three audits).
• RC2 Release Notes — 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