llm-wiki-kit

A set of agent skills and a starter Obsidian vault for keeping a personal wiki that an LLM helps maintain. Based on Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern.

The idea: instead of searching raw documents every time you have a question (RAG), the agent processes a source once and writes it into structured, linked Obsidian notes. Questions are then answered from those notes. You pick the sources and ask the questions; the agent does the summarizing, linking, and filing.

How it's organized

There are three layers:

1. Raw sources — your original material (articles, PDFs, notes, screenshots). Never modified.
2. The wiki — markdown notes with YAML frontmatter and [[wikilinks]], kept in the vault.
3. The skills — the instruction files in skills/ that tell the agent how to maintain the wiki.

What's in this repo

llm-wiki-kit/
├── skills/          20 agent skills
├── vault-template/  an empty vault you can copy and start using
├── .env.example     config (vault path, sources, search)
├── install.sh       links the skills into your agent's skills directory
├── setup-qmd.sh     optional: installs and indexes local search
└── LICENSE

Skills

Skill	What it does
llm-wiki	Explains the pattern and retrieval approach. Start here.
wiki-setup	Initializes a new vault (structure, system files, config).
wiki-ingest	Turns a raw source into wiki notes.
ingest-url	Fetches a URL and ingests it.
data-ingest	Ingests structured/tabular data.
claude-history-ingest	Mines Claude conversation history into the wiki.
codex-history-ingest	Mines Codex CLI session history into the wiki.
wiki-query	Answers questions from the wiki, with links to source notes.
wiki-research	Runs web research and files the results into the wiki.
wiki-update	Revises existing notes as things change.
wiki-synthesize	Builds notes that connect several existing notes.
cross-linker	Finds and adds missing [[wikilinks]].
tag-taxonomy	Keeps tags to a controlled list.
wiki-lint	Checks for orphans, broken links, contradictions, stale notes.
wiki-status	Reports what's new and what's ready to ingest.
wiki-dashboard	Generates a vault overview.
wiki-rebuild	Rebuilds the index and cache from the notes.
wiki-export	Exports the wiki to other formats.
wiki-capture	Drops rough notes into the staging area.
graph-colorize	Colors the Obsidian graph by category.

Requirements

• Obsidian, to read and edit the vault.
• An agent that loads skills from a directory — Claudian (the Obsidian + Claude plugin), Claude Code, or similar.
• Optional: qmd, a local search engine (BM25 + vector). Without it, the skills use Grep instead, so it's not required. See setup-qmd.sh or run npm install -g @tobilu/qmd.

Setup

Two commands. The installer is interactive and does everything else (links the skills, asks where the vault should live, creates it, writes the config):

git clone https://github.com/Ivy-Chen1999/llm-wiki-kit.git
cd llm-wiki-kit
./install.sh

Then follow the final instructions it prints: open the vault folder in Obsidian, and ask your agent to ingest a source or answer a question.

Notes:

• The installer links skills into ~/.claude/skills, which Claude (Claude Code and the Claudian Obsidian plugin) reads automatically. For another agent: ./install.sh --skills-dir <that agent's skills dir>.
• It offers to install local search (qmd) at the end. Saying no is fine — the skills fall back to Grep. You can run ./setup-qmd.sh later instead.
• Re-running is safe: existing skills, vault, and config are left untouched.

Working with more than one vault

The skills resolve the target vault in this order (highest first):

1. an OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH environment variable (per-session override),
2. a .env at the current working directory / vault root (vault-scoped),
3. ~/.obsidian-wiki/config (the global default).

So to keep a vault self-contained, drop a .env at its root pointing OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH at itself (and give it its own QMD_WIKI_COLLECTION). Work from that vault and the skills target only it — the global default and your other vaults are untouched.

How to use it — just say what you want

You don't memorize skill names. Skills trigger automatically from what you say — Claude matches your message to the right one. Open your vault in Claude and talk normally:

You want to…	Just say something like…
Add an article / file / folder	"add this to my wiki", "ingest these docs"
Add a web page	"save this link to my wiki", paste a URL + "add this"
Ask what you know	"what do I know about X?", "find everything on Y"
Quick answer (no deep read)	"quick answer: …", "just scan for …"
Save the current chat	"save this conversation to my wiki"
Connect related notes	"find missing links", "my wiki feels disconnected"
Find cross-cutting themes	"what concepts keep coming up together?"
Check health / fix issues	"audit my wiki", "what needs fixing?"
See what's been ingested	"what's the status of my wiki?"
Research a topic from the web	"research X and file it", "deep dive on Y"
Tidy up tags	"clean up my tags", "normalize tags"
Color the graph	"color my graph by category"
Start fresh	"archive and rebuild the wiki"

If a phrasing doesn't trigger the right skill, just name it ("use wiki-ingest") — but normal language usually works.

Vault layout

The vault-template/ uses a flat layout: all notes live in notes/, and the category is set in frontmatter (category: concept|entity|reference|insight|synthesis).

my-wiki/
├── notes/        the notes
├── raw/          staging area for unprocessed sources
├── journal/      daily notes
├── Templates/    note and daily-note templates
└── _system/
    ├── index.md  table of contents (maintained by the skills)
    ├── hot.md    short summary of recent activity
    ├── log.md    append-only change log
    └── tags.md   tag list

If you prefer one folder per category, wiki-setup can generate that layout instead.

Make it your own

The 20 skills above are the shared core. The skills that pay off most are usually personal — shaped around how you work. You're encouraged to add your own:

• a retro skill that writes a project post-mortem into the vault,
• a digest skill that pulls your todos + field news into a dated entry,
• your own ingest house-style, or a dispatcher that routes "/wiki do X".

personal-skills/ has a blank template and two worked examples (retro, digest) to copy and adapt. Personal skills live in ~/.claude/skills/, not in this repo — so updating the shared core (git pull) never touches them.

Credits

• The pattern comes from Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki (the three-layer structure and the idea of processing a source once instead of re-searching it each time). His original write-up is included in skills/llm-wiki/references/karpathy-pattern.md.
• Built for Obsidian.
• The skills were taken from a personal vault and generalized: hardcoded paths, personal collection names, and non-English text removed.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.