How to Use in Command Line

IWE provides a powerful command-line interface for managing markdown-based knowledge graphs. The CLI enables you to initialize projects, normalize documents, explore connections, export visualizations, and create consolidated documents.

Quick Start

1. Initialize a project: iwe init
2. Create a new document: iwe create --template default --var title="My Note"
3. Retrieve a document with context: iwe retrieve -k my-note
4. Find and search documents: iwe find "search term"
5. Count matching documents: iwe count --filter 'status: draft'
6. Normalize all documents: iwe normalize
7. View document hierarchy: iwe tree
8. Analyze your knowledge base: iwe stats
9. Export graph visualization: iwe export -f dot
10. Rename a document: iwe rename old-key new-key
11. Delete a document: iwe delete document-key
12. Bulk delete by filter: iwe delete --filter 'status: archived'
13. Extract a section: iwe extract document --section "Title"
14. Inline a reference: iwe inline document --reference "other-doc"
15. Overwrite a document body: iwe update -k document-key -c "new content"
16. Mutate frontmatter: iwe update --filter 'status: draft' --set reviewed=true
17. Attach via configured action: iwe attach --to today -k document-key

Installation & Setup

Before using the CLI, ensure IWE is installed and available in your PATH. Initialize any directory as an IWE project:

cd your-notes-directory
iwe init

This creates a .iwe/ directory with configuration files.

Global Usage

iwe [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Global Options

• -V, --version: Display version information
• -v, --verbose <LEVEL>: Set verbosity level (default: 0)
  • 1: Minimal output (INFO level messages to stderr)
  • 2 or higher: Debug-level information to stderr
• -h, --help: Show help information

Configuration

Commands respect settings in .iwe/config.toml:

[library]
path = ""  # Subdirectory containing markdown files

[markdown]
refs_extension = ""
refs_path = "relative"
date_format = "%b %d, %Y"

See Configuration for all available options.

Querying

find, count, update, and delete accept the same YAML-based filter language. Read-only commands (retrieve, tree, export) accept the filter flags as a selector to narrow what they operate on.

The two entry points:

• --filter "EXPR" — inline YAML filter document.
• Structural anchor flags — -k, --includes, --included-by, --references, --referenced-by (all repeatable, ANDed at the top level), with optional KEY[:DEPTH] / KEY[:DIST] colon-suffix.

See the Query Language reference for the YAML syntax, operators, and examples.

Command Categories

Document Management

Document Retrieval

Refactoring Operations

Analysis & Export

Exit Codes

All commands return exit code 0 on success. On error, commands print a message to stderr and return exit code 1.

# Check exit code
iwe find "nonexistent-query"
echo $?  # Returns 0 (empty result is not an error)

iwe retrieve --key "missing-doc"
echo $?  # Returns 1 (document not found is an error)