Import existing knowledge

On first onboarding, Persome opens one authenticated localhost setup page and shows a multi-select import step. A local folder is always available. Obsidian appears only when Persome finds a registered local vault, and Notion appears only when its desktop app is installed. Sources that are not present on the Mac are not shown. The user may select any combination or skip the step entirely; selected folders use the native macOS folder picker without leaving the setup flow.

The import is read-only: Persome neither writes to the source nor installs an Obsidian plugin. Hidden directories such as .obsidian, symlinks, non-text attachments, and files larger than 2 MiB are excluded. All selected sources are staged first, then one shared model build creates the first personal model. Files are opened with the platform’s no-follow flag, bounded to 2 MiB, and checked before and after reading; a note being edited during import is skipped and can be picked up safely on the next run. One import is bounded to 2,000 documents, 128 MiB of eligible text, and 2,000 staged sessions; a larger source must be split into smaller folders. Persome also refuses both its own private data directory and any parent folder containing it, preventing a generated-model feedback loop.

Notion’s application cache is never inspected or modified. Detecting Notion.app only makes the option relevant in onboarding; the user then chooses an unpacked export copy with the native folder picker. Obsidian discovery reads its vault registry, but content import excludes the entire .obsidian tree.

Onboarding states

The unified onboarding page follows four import states:

Choose sources. Local folder is always present. Obsidian appears only for a real registered vault; Notion appears only when its desktop app is installed. The user may select multiple sources or choose Not Now.
Choose folders. Obsidian needs no second choice. Local folder and Notion export use the macOS folder picker, making the exact read boundary visible.
Import and build. Status lines name each source as read-only. All sources stage idempotently, then share one model build through the production writer.
Receipt. Onboarding reports new/changed, unchanged, and skipped files. A failed or degraded build remains resumable and is never presented as ready; retries also rerun structural model formation when every source file is unchanged.

This is the lowest-friction first import because an Obsidian vault is already a local folder of Markdown files. A plugin is not required for migration; a future plugin can add continuous, event-driven sync inside Obsidian.

The same source-agnostic entry point is available after onboarding:

# Auto-detect the currently open registered Obsidian vault.
persome import-data --source obsidian

# Import any local Markdown or UTF-8 text folder.
persome import-data --source folder --path ~/Documents/notes

# Import an unpacked Notion Markdown export.
persome import-data --source notion --path ~/Downloads/notion-export

Files are keyed by source path and SHA-256 content hash. Unchanged files are not modeled twice; changed files retain a new provenance session. Imported content enters the existing timeline/session writer and model-build pipeline, so it follows the same evidence and idempotency rules as live context. Use --no-build to stage changed documents without immediately running model formation.

The current generic importer accepts .md, .markdown, and .txt. Unpack a Notion export before selecting its folder. Other structured cloud sources can be added behind the same importer contract without changing onboarding.