knoriai user manual

01Getting startedWorks offline

knoriai is a desktop app that gathers your easily-scattered creative process in one place, so you can later bring it back to life as an artist statement, a portfolio, or exhibition materials. When you keep not just finished work but also studies, experiments, and exhibitions you've visited, that record keeps becoming raw material for your next piece. Most of it works just the same even without an internet connection.

The flow knoriai supports

Capture → Connect → Organize & research → Writing → Portfolio → Export. It's a virtuous cycle where the record you build up becomes the material for the next step. This guide follows that same order.

Installation

1. On the download page at knoriai.com, grab the installer that matches your computer. (Windows 10/11 / macOS 10.15 or later)
2. Run the downloaded file to install.
3. Open the app and you can start right away. Your personal records work as-is, no sign-in needed.

Screen layout — three vertical columns

• Far left (room list) — your personal space "Me" and the rooms you've joined are stacked vertically. Use the ＋ at the very bottom to create or join a room.
• Menu — where you choose what to do next. From the top: Home, Capture, Connect, Organize & Research, Writing, Gallery, Portfolio, Feedback Received, and Trash.
• Workspace — the actual screen for the menu you picked opens on the right.

02CapturingWorks offline

Capturing is where knoriai begins. Beyond finished work, you can keep every creative moment — studies, failures, material experiments, exhibitions you visited, reference clippings, and more. So you can later retrace "why did I do it this way back then?", the key is to capture the result together with your thinking that day.

Jot down a quick line

1. Open Capture from the left menu.
2. Type a line in the Quick note field at the top and press Enter — it saves instantly.

Write in detail

1. Click New record at the top right.
2. Enter a title (a title is required to save), then choose a type.
3. Add the work date (today by default) and tags (type and press Enter).
4. In the work log fields (materials · state of the work · state of the artist), leave notes about your day.
5. The body uses a rich-text editor, so you can add bold, color, headings, lists, tables, images, and links.
6. Click Save to move to the read view.

Four types, sorted like this

• Work — creative results you made yourself, and their process.
• Activity — things around your practice, like exhibition visits, workshops, and meetings.
• Reference — reference images, texts, and clippings.
• Note — thoughts and idea memos as they come to you.

Adding photos and files

• You can drag photos onto a saved record, or paste them with Ctrl+V.
• If you have a lot of existing work files, use Import folder / Import files on the Capture screen to bring them in all at once.

03ConnectingWorks offline

As records pile up, the relationships between them start to matter. When you link which study led to which finished piece, and where an idea came from, scattered records become a single story.

How to create a connection

1. In a record's body, add another record's name in the form [[Record title]] and save. (Type [[ and an autocomplete pops up.)
2. The two records link to each other and are joined by a line in the graph.

Four views on the Connect screen

Open Connect in the menu and switch views with the tabs at the top.

• Organize — search by title and body, filter by type, and sort. View as a list or a board (kanban), and group into collections.
• Timeline — scan straight through in order of work date to see the flow.
• Graph — a map that draws records as dots and connections as lines. Let them float freely, or follow the roots like a "family tree."
• Keywords — highlight important words in your text to register and gather them in one place.

04Organize & research (Ethos AI)Sign-in required

Ethos is an AI assistant that organizes and researches alongside you, based on your own records and writing. You can open it from Organize & Research in the left menu, or call it up with the Ethos button at the bottom right of any screen.

You decide what it can read

Under Settings › App settings › What Ethos can read you can turn Records and Writing on or off separately (both start on). Turn one off and that kind of content is never passed to Ethos.

05WritingWorks offline

Write artist statements, work descriptions, critiques, and applications grounded in the records you've accumulated. Because you write from your actual records rather than memory, the content stays concrete and doesn't drift from the facts.

1. From the menu, go to Writing → New piece.
2. Write the title and body with the rich-text editor.
3. Open Sources, pick the records your writing draws on, and pin them — then you can jump from your writing to the original with a single click (without the contents getting mixed up).
4. When you're done, save it as a file with Export PDF.

06GalleryWorks offline

A place to organize photos of your finished works, catalog-style, together with their details (captions). Curate it well here and it leads straight into portfolios, exhibitions, and sales materials.

1. Open Gallery from the menu.
2. Drag photos in, paste them (Ctrl+V), or upload them with Choose files.
3. Fill in details like title, materials, size, year, period, and collection/owner.
4. Select the works you want and click Build a portfolio from selected works to carry them into a portfolio.

07PortfolioWorks offline

Freely arrange works and writing to build a portfolio all your own. You place elements like on a canvas and adjust size and position, so you can compose it however you like with no fixed template.

1. From the menu, go to Portfolio → New portfolio.
2. Place text and works (images) on the canvas, then drag to adjust position, size, and rotation. Multiple pages are supported too.
3. Your work saves automatically.
4. When it's done, save it with Export PPT or Export PDF(you can choose the quality).

08ExportWorks offline

Pull your finished results out as files. Everything is processed on your own computer (no internet needed). Export isn't a separate menu — you run it from a button on each screen.

• PDF — from the record read view, Writing, Portfolio, and Feedback Received (print).
• PPT (editable) — from Portfolio (the canvas portfolio).
• Word document — via Word (Hangul) on the record read view. It opens in both MS Word and Hangul (Hancom).

09Home & calendarWorks offline

The first screen you see when you open the app. It captures deadlines and recent activity at a glance.

• Three cards at the top — Today · Upcoming deadlines · Recent records.
• Add and edit events on the big calendar (title, type, date, time, place, notes, and linked records).
• You can create your own event types (color and name).

10Rooms (collaboration)Sign-in required

A shared space for groups, like critiques, classes, and study circles. Your personal records stay put, and you only share what you want to show by uploading a copy to the room. (Rooms require sign-in.)

Creating and joining a room

1. Click the ＋ at the very bottom of the room list on the left.
2. In Create room, set the room name and default categories, or paste a code you received into Join with invite code.

Inside a room

• Three tabs across the top — Home (notices, schedule, members) · Member status board (a table of who submitted what) · Notice board.
• Roles are split into Owner · Sub-admin · Member · Viewer. Only owners/sub-admins can post notices, manage categories, and manage members.

Uploading your records to a room

1. On a personal record's read view, click Upload to shared room.
2. Choose the room and category, then upload.

Room settings

From the gear icon next to the room name, you can issue an invite code, change member roles, leave the room, and (for owners) delete the room.

11Feedback receivedSign-in required

A place to gather the feedback you've received across multiple rooms in one spot, and revise your work side by side with the original.

• Feedback you receive collects under Feedback Received in the menu (with a badge for the unread count).
• Open a piece of feedback to see correction suggestions, notes, references, and attachments.
• Use View side by side with the original to compare against your own original, or Edit the original and Print (PDF).

12Account and sign-inSign-in required

Personal records work without signing in, but rooms and device sync require an account.

Sign up · Sign in

1. Click Sign in / Sign up at the bottom left.
2. Sign up with a display name (e.g. Yeonwoo Seo) · email · password (6+ characters). A unique tag (e.g. Yeonwoo Seo#0427) is appended to your name automatically.
3. After signing up, confirm your email and sign in.

Managing your account

Under Settings › Account you can change your display name, email, and password, and sign out.

13Device syncSign-in required

To see the same personal records on multiple devices, turn on sync. The contents are end-to-end encrypted, so even the server can't open them.

Settings › Account › Device sync › Open sync settings

1. Set a sync passphrase (different from your sign-in password, 8+ characters).
2. Keep the recovery code that comes with it somewhere safe.
3. Once you sign in, device sync starts automatically.

14App settings and plans

Manage your display and usage information.

App settings

Under Settings › App settings you can change the theme (light, dark, system), the start screen, and the font size.

Plans

Capture, Connect, Organize, Writing, Gallery, Portfolio, basic export, and device sync are free to use. AI (Ethos) and high-quality export are the parts that belong to the paid plans.