Source · editing
Pricing model — v2
Link references
The dashed phrase points at a real note. Click "Create link" to turn it into a typed, two-way mention.
Bidirectional links —
your notes connect
themselves.
Type a wiki link, a mention, or let your AI agent cite a note — every connection becomes a typed, two-way backlink. Rename a note, the references update. Forget to link, unlinked mentions surface them. The graph maintains itself.
4
link types
typed by default
typed by default
3
ways to
create a link
create a link
0
manual
upkeep
upkeep
§ 2 — The Bidirectional Engine
One forward link. Two notes know about it.
Pick a scenario below — each one models a real reason notes connect. Watch the source note grow a typed mention block, watch the target note's backlinks panel pick up the incoming reference, watch the edge draw between them. Five clicks; five edges; the graph thickens in front of you.
Try a scenario
Target · read-only
North star metric
Backlinks 0
No incoming references yet.
§ 3 — The link anatomy
Four kinds of link. Three ways to make one.
Most note apps ship one kind of link — a flat, untyped pointer. Knovya treats links as relationships: each one carries a type that travels with it through the backlinks panel, the graph, and the search index.
3a · Four kinds of link
What this connection actually means.
Type 01 references
references
A cites B as evidence.
Use when one note draws on another — citation, source material, supporting evidence. The default when you wiki-link.
Type 02 depends_on
depends_on
A is blocked until B exists.
Use for workflow chains — a plan that builds on a decision, a project blocked by a dependency, a task that needs a prerequisite finished first.
Type 03 supersedes
supersedes
A replaces B; B is archived.
Use when a new version takes over from an old one. The previous note is moved to archived state automatically, kept for history but out of the active feed.
Type 04 related
related
A and B simply belong together.
Use for soft, bidirectional connections — two notes that share a theme, two ideas worth keeping next to each other, no causal direction.
3b · Three ways to make one
Pick the syntax. The graph reads them all.
[[Q3 OKRs]]
Wiki link
The classic Roam/Obsidian syntax — type two square brackets, get a link. Knovya resolves it on save. If the target note doesn't exist yet, the wiki link offers to create it. Fuzzy title matching catches near-spellings.
As discussed in Q3 OKRs, the goal is unchanged.
Mention block
The richer form — a typed inline reference with a stable ID. Renaming the target updates every mention block automatically. Deleting the target flags every mention so you can decide. A wiki link saves to a mention block under the hood.
Claude · cited Q3 OKRs
Agent badge
When your AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini) cite a note while answering you, the citation becomes a real backlink — with the agent's name attached. The provenance travels with the connection.
§ 4 — The problem
Forward links are easy.
Backlinks are work.
Scene 01
Notion stores backlinks but they're flat — every connection looks the same, untyped, untaggable. You wrote a citation, a dependency, and a "this is just related" — the panel can't tell them apart six months later.
Scene 02
Obsidian, Roam, Logseq nailed bidirectional wiki links. But mention blocks aren't a concept; agent citations don't exist; rename propagation is best-effort plugin territory. The link graph is yours to babysit.
Scene 03
When your AI agent finds the right note and cites it in a reply, the citation lives in chat history — not in the link graph. The connection your agent drew evaporates the moment the conversation closes.
Bidirectional linking turned out to be three problems, not one — typing the connection, multiple ways to express it, and keeping the graph honest as notes move. Knovya solves all three by default, the moment you write a link.
§ 5 — Lineage
Eighty years of two-way links.
Bidirectional linking is older than the web. The web shipped one-way links by accident — and the rest of the field has been pulling the original idea back ever since.
-
1945
Vannevar Bush — Memex
"As We May Think" appears in The Atlantic. Bush imagines a desk-sized machine that builds "associative trails" between documents — the conceptual ancestor of the link.
-
1965
Ted Nelson — zippered lists
Nelson presents "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the Indeterminate" at the ACM National Conference. Project Xanadu's bidirectional links and transclusion are introduced.
-
2001
Wikipedia — what links here
"What links here" lands in the MediaWiki sidebar. A whole generation learns that the page they're reading is part of a graph, not a destination.
-
2019—2020
Roam, Obsidian, Logseq
Roam Research mainstreams the [[wiki link]] syntax with bidirectional backlinks. Obsidian and Logseq follow with local-file versions. Personal knowledge management gets a shape.
-
2026
Knovya — typed, mention-aware, agent-aware
Four link types, three creation methods, automatic rename propagation, unlinked-mention discovery, agent citations as first-class backlinks. Bidirectional, by default, for humans and agents alike.
§ 6 — First mover
The market splits cleanly: PKM apps with one-tone wiki links, or note apps with no backlinks at all. Knovya is the third option.
Notion · Apple Notes · Bear · Drafts
Backlinks are weak or missing. Notion shows incoming references but they're flat — no typing, no mention blocks, no rename safety net. Apple Notes and Bear have neither backlinks nor a graph.
Obsidian · Roam · Logseq
Wiki links plus bidirectional backlinks — done well. But every connection is the same untyped flavor. Mention blocks aren't a concept. Agent citations live outside the graph. Rename propagation is plugin territory.
TiddlyWiki · DEVONthink · Tana
Powerful in their own niches — TiddlyWiki for hyperlinked authoring, DEVONthink for archives, Tana for typed nodes. But each ships a partial answer: typed without bidirectional, or bidirectional without typed, or both without agent awareness.
Knovya — Backlinks
Four typed link kinds, three creation surfaces, automatic rename propagation, unlinked-mention discovery, agent citations as first-class backlinks. The PKM bidirectional pattern, extended for the way notes actually get written in 2026.
§ 7 — Surfaces
Where backlinks show their face.
Backlinks aren't a settings page. They live in the editor, the sidebar, the discovery widget, and the graph — every place a note can be reached from somewhere else.
Surface 01 · Editor
Mention block — inline, typed
Type @ or [[ in any note and an autocomplete opens. Pick the target, optionally pick the type, get a typed mention block in your sentence. The link is real before you finish writing.
Q3 OKRs — v3
Goals carried over from Q2. Key result on hiring is owned by @q3 hir|
Q3 hiring plan · plan
Q3 hiring debrief · journal
Create new note "Q3 hir…"
Surface 02 · Sidebar
Backlinks panel — grouped by type
Open any note; the right sidebar shows incoming references, grouped by link type and ranked by NoteRank. Citations sit apart from dependencies sit apart from related-thread connections.
Backlinks 5 incoming
references 3
← Pricing model — v2 "…aligned to the north star metric…"
← Roadmap H2
depends on 1
← Q3 OKRs
Surface 03 · Discovery
Unlinked mentions — surfaced
When you write a note's title in another note's body without linking it, Knovya finds the missed connection and offers to promote it. Most of the time the link you wanted to make is one you forgot.
Unlinked mentions · 2 found
"…the new approach supersedes our pricing model v2 and is grounded in customer feedback."
in: Pricing strategy 2026 + Link
"…aligned with what came out of customer interviews last week."
in: Q3 retro draft + Link
Surface 04 · Graph
Typed edges in the graph view
Every typed link feeds the knowledge graph. Edge color tells you what kind of connection it is at a glance — citations, dependencies, related threads. The shape of your work, color-coded.
references depends_on related
§ 8 — Bonded with
Backlinks are the bones the rest hangs from.
Every other Group II element reads the typed-link graph. Knowledge Graph visualises it. NoteRank weighs each edge. Hybrid Search adds a connection bonus. Experience Envelope walks it for context.
13 Kg
Knowledge Graph
Renders every backlink as a typed edge, color-coded, navigable, filterable.
11 Nr
NoteRank
Weighs link types differently — depends_on edges count more than related edges in the ranking signal.
14 Hs
Hybrid Search
Lifts notes that share strong manual links with the top hit — graph-aware retrieval.
12 Ee
Experience Envelope
Walks supersedes chains and depends_on threads to assemble the context layer.
Frequently asked.
What is bidirectional linking?
A bidirectional link is a connection between two notes that exists on both sides — when note A links to note B, note B knows about it. The link is visible from either end. Ted Nelson described this in 1965 as the original way hypertext was supposed to work; the World Wide Web ended up shipping one-way links instead, and most note apps inherited that limitation. Bidirectional links recover the original idea: every connection is two-way, navigable from either note.
How does Knovya create backlinks automatically?
Three creation surfaces — wiki links (the [[Note Title]] syntax popularised by Roam and Obsidian), mention blocks (a typed inline reference with ID and display name), and agent badges (links your AI agents create when they cite a note while answering you). All three produce a bidirectional link in the same database. The target note immediately shows the incoming link in its backlinks panel — no rebuild step, no manual sync.
References, depends on, supersedes, related — when do I use which?
Four kinds of link cover most of what people actually mean when they connect notes. References is the default — note A cites note B as evidence or background. Depends on captures a workflow chain — note A is blocked until note B is done, or note A builds on what note B established. Supersedes marks replacement — note A is the new version, note B is archived but kept for history. Related is the soft, bidirectional general-purpose link for two notes that simply belong together. The link type travels with the connection in the graph and shows up in the backlinks panel — useful when you come back six months later.
What is a mention block?
A mention block is an inline reference that's more than a link — it's a typed pointer with a stable ID and a display name. If you rename the target note, every mention block updates automatically. If you delete the target, mention blocks are flagged so you can decide what to do. They look like ordinary text inside your sentence but behave like database citations. The wiki link syntax [[Note Title]] resolves to a mention block on save.
What happens to my links when I rename a note?
Every reference updates automatically. Wiki links rewrite their display text, mention blocks pick up the new title, the backlinks panel reflects the new name on every linked note, and the knowledge graph relabels the node — all in one transaction. Renaming a note that has fifty incoming links costs the same as renaming a note with one. Roam, Obsidian, and Logseq do this within a single vault; Knovya does it across notes, agent transcripts, and shared workspace edges.
What are unlinked mentions?
When you write a note's title in the body of another note but don't actually link it — the words are there but no connection exists yet — that's an unlinked mention. Knovya finds these automatically and surfaces them in the backlinks panel as suggestions. One click promotes an unlinked mention to a real bidirectional link. Most of the time, finding the missing connections is more useful than creating new ones.
Are backlinks shown to people I share notes with?
Only the backlinks that point to notes the recipient already has access to. Sharing one note with a colleague doesn't reveal the rest of your workspace through the backlinks panel — Knovya filters incoming links by the viewer's permissions. Public links and shared notes work the same way. Encrypted notes never appear in any backlinks panel, even your own, until they're decrypted.
Bl · 15 · ★
Notes that connect themselves.
Twenty notes in, manual linking is fine. Two hundred in, you stop bothering. Two thousand in, the graph either maintains itself or collapses into a folder of orphaned files. Knovya picks the first one, by default.