Config

Project and global configuration for pk.

Project config — .pk/config.json

pk init writes .pk/config.json to your project root. pk commands find the knowledge directory by walking up from the current directory — no environment variables needed. .pk/ is automatically added to your .gitignore.

location	<project-root>/.pk/config.json
mode: local	knowledge store at .pk/ (default)
mode: global	knowledge store at ~/.pk/<name>/ — note: global mode writes to ~/.pk/config.json instead
gitignore	yes — .pk/ added automatically

To switch projects temporarily, set PK_KNOWLEDGE_DIR in your shell. The env var takes precedence over all other resolution. For persistent switching, use pk use <name>.

Global config — ~/.pk/config.json

~/.pk/config.json stores machine-wide pk settings. pk init --global writes currentProject here. pk use changes it.

currentProject

Name of the active global project. Fallback for requireKnowledgeDir().

example

$ "currentProject": "journal"

Resolution order

requireKnowledgeDir() resolves the knowledge directory in this order:

1 PK_KNOWLEDGE_DIR env var

2 .pk/config.json found by walking up from CWD

3 currentProject in ~/.pk/config.json

4 Error

Embedding config

Embeddings are optional but strongly recommended — without them, search only matches exact keywords. See Embeddings for why that matters.

embedding

$pk config --embedding nomic-embed-text

$pk config --no-embedding

$pk config --base-url http://localhost:11434

When to rebuild

After changing embedding settings, rebuild the index so existing notes get the new vectors.

rebuild

$pk index