Import knowledge
Bring a Breno archive, an Obsidian vault, a Notion export or Markdown into a workspace, with metadata restored and duplicates skipped.
Import is the other half of export. It reads what Breno writes, and the formats people already keep notes in.
Start an import#
Open Export and use Bring knowledge in. Choose what you are importing and upload the file:
| Format | What it is |
|---|---|
| Breno archive | A ZIP exported from Breno (it has a bundle.json). |
| Obsidian vault | A zipped Obsidian vault of Markdown notes. |
| Notion export | A Notion export. |
| Markdown | A zip of Markdown or text files. |
You do not have to say which: Breno detects the format from what cannot be wrong, checking in order the manifest of a Breno archive, then Notion's page ids, then its CSV files, then a vault.
What an import does#
- It runs as a background job and shows its progress.
- Metadata is restored, not re-derived. For a Breno archive that means tags, collections, space, sensitivity, timestamps, the owner (matched by email) and provenance come back as they were.
- Duplicates are skipped. Importing the same archive twice does not create the items twice.
- Items are read and indexed like any other capture.
Cost and confirmation#
Ingestion is billed by the page, so before an import is accepted Breno shows the estimated cost in coins, and asks you to confirm a large one. See Billing and coins.
Move a workspace#
To move a workspace between instances, export it from the first (as an Owner or Admin) and import the archive into an empty workspace in the second. The round trip is covered by a test: the same item count, titles, tags, timestamps and files come back.
Checksums#
An importer is expected to verify checksums.sha256 first and to reject an archive whose files do not match. See Export format.