New, Open or Import

Every way to begin lives behind one button, New / Open / Import…. You'll find it in the Projects window (click your project's name, top left) and on the screen you see when Filamental has nothing open yet. It opens a single window with three groups.

Fast Start

• Blank is an empty project. You choose a name and where it lives.
• Use a Template gives you ready-made classifications and connectors for a kind of work, and you can add as many as you like (see Top Bar).
• Open opens a Filamental project from anywhere on your computer.

Use What You Have

Folder is for a plain folder of files. Choose it and Filamental looks at what's inside. A folder that's already a project simply opens, and an Obsidian vault is offered the import described in Working with Obsidian. Anything else gets a short step saying the folder isn't a Filamental project yet, with its options underneath. Step by step in Open a Folder as a Project.

Open as a project makes each file a node, ready for you to arrange. Notes that link to each other with wikilinks are connected. Your notes get Filamental details added to their front matter (any fields they already have are kept), and nothing is moved or deleted.

If the folder has sub-folders, you'll also see Use sub-folders as classifications. Switch it on and the files in each top-level sub-folder arrive in a classification named after it, PDFs and images included. Anything sitting in the top folder stays unclassified.

Obsidian imports a vault, turning wikilinks into connectors (see Working with Obsidian). The same sub-folder choice is there, as one of the ways to classify your notes.

Mermaid starts a new project and builds its structure from Mermaid code you paste in. The prompts to get that code out of an AI are in AI Connections & Prompting.

Use AI

Document Exploration reads one document and builds a structure from it. Folder Exploration does the same for a whole folder. Both run on the AI you've connected, and both are covered in Explore a Folder or Document with AI.

Adding to the project you already have open

The explorations and the folder classifying can also work on the project in front of you. Click + in the bottom bar and choose:

• Insert a Document Exploration or Insert a Folder Exploration, which add what the AI finds as a separate structure, leaving everything already there alone.
• Classify notes by folder, which gives every note that has no classification the classification of the top-level folder it sits in. Notes that already have one are never touched, and neither are notes in the top folder. This one is for notes only, and Filamental reopens the project afterwards so the change shows.

These are switched off in a project that's read-only, such as the Help playground.