Blog

Notes from building
Korely

Engineering decisions. Product trade-offs. Honest updates from the founder.

Does a memory layer still beat naive context? An equal-budget test
AI & Machine Learning

Does a memory layer still beat naive context? An equal-budget test

At the same token budget, does a curated memory block beat just sending the most recent messages? On a 178-question benchmark the right pages answer 76 percent correctly versus 42 percent, and the gap holds even when you swap the reader.

AI & Machine Learning · June 26, 2026 · 10 min
How Korely fuses keyword and meaning into one search result
Architecture

How Korely fuses keyword and meaning into one search result

Plain keyword search misses paraphrases. Plain semantic search misses exact identifiers. Korely runs both and fuses them with Reciprocal Rank Fusion.

Architecture · May 14, 2026 · 9 min
How Korely finds notes by meaning, on your machine
AI & Machine Learning

How Korely finds notes by meaning, on your machine

A small open-weights embedding model running on your CPU turns every note into a 768-number vector. No API key, no upload, no cost per query.

AI & Machine Learning · May 12, 2026 · 8 min
How Korely builds your knowledge graph, on your machine
Architecture

How Korely builds your knowledge graph, on your machine

People, projects, topics, dates. Korely pulls them out of your notes with GLiNER and stitches them into a graph that auto-links related work.

Architecture · May 10, 2026 · 7 min
How Korely turns audio into notes, on Free and on Pro
Product

How Korely turns audio into notes, on Free and on Pro

Whisper on Free runs entirely on your machine. Deepgram on Pro adds speaker names and live transcription. Same workflow, two engines.

Product · May 8, 2026 · 8 min
How Korely uses cloud AI: a large model, only when it needs to think
AI & Machine Learning

How Korely uses cloud AI: a large model, only when it needs to think

Local models handle indexing and graph building. A larger cloud model is reserved for chat with citations, post-meeting recaps, and the hard summary work.

AI & Machine Learning · May 6, 2026 · 7 min

Frequently asked questions

What is Korely? +

A local-first knowledge base for your meetings, notes, and ideas. It lives on your machine and connects to your AI tools, Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Can I import my Obsidian vault? +

Yes. Korely reads your Obsidian markdown vault as-is, folders, frontmatter, wikilinks, attachments. Notion and Apple Notes import are coming next.

How is this different from Notion or Mem.ai? +

Your notes live as plain markdown files on your disk. Nothing leaves your machine until you explicitly enable a cloud feature. And your AI tools reach the vault directly via MCP, not through a proprietary chat box you don't control.

Is it open source? +

Not yet. The desktop app and MCP server may go open source down the line. Building in public means showing the work; the source comes when it's stable enough not to mislead anyone.

How much does it cost? +

Free forever for the local vault, unlimited notes, hybrid search, MCP, Obsidian import. €14/month for Business: live meeting transcription, audio/video to note, AI chat with GraphRAG over your vault, cloud sync, MCP cloud multi-tenant.

Ready to try it yourself?

Free forever. Your data stays on your machine until you say so.