Cascade Knowledge Base

A layered, agent-managed wiki where local content overlays read-only upstream sources. Built on Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern with extensions for scaling, lifecycle management, and multi-agent support.

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Directory Structure

├── libs/         # Read-only external KBs copied via git (gitignored)
├── linked/       # Read-only upstream KBs mounted as symlinks
├── outputs/      # Generated artifacts, exports, compiled files
├── raw/          # User-provided source material
│   └── inbox/    # Drop zone: unprocessed material
├── tmp/          # Temporary files, caches (gitignored)
├── wiki/         # Local structured markdown wiki (agent-managed)
│   ├── index.md      # Routing table with "Use when" triggers + kb_schema_version
│   ├── overview.md   # High-level map
│   ├── log.md        # Root rollup change log
│   ├── error-book.md # Compilation errors & derived constraints
│   ├── entities/     # Typed entity pages (people, projects, concepts) + own index.md
│   └── graph/        # Edge lists and relationship data + own index.md
└── workload/     # Session summaries & decisions
    └── YYYY-MM-DD_summary.md

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Cascade Priority

When searching, layers are checked in order — first match wins:

wiki/        (highest)  ← agent writes here, always wins
linked/A/    (medium)   ← symlinked upstream KBs
linked/B/    (low)      ← symlinked upstream KBs
libs/A/      (lowest)   ← git-managed external KB copies

The agent never writes to linked/ or libs/. To correct upstream content, write the right version in wiki/ — it takes precedence automatically.

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Features

Inbox-Driven Workflow

Drop any raw material (notes, articles, links) into raw/inbox/ without organizing. On "Ingest", the agent processes the inbox — extracts knowledge, files it into wiki/, and archives processed items to raw/.

Lazy-Loading Index with "Use When" Triggers

wiki/index.md is a routing table. Each entry has a Use when column listing trigger keywords. The agent reads the index first (stays in context), matches keywords against the task, and only loads matching pages. This drops context overhead from ~12K to ~3.2K tokens per task.

TLDR-First Query Layer

Every page carries a one-sentence tldr in frontmatter. When querying, the agent reads TLDRs first. If the TLDR already answers the question, the full body is never loaded. Fallback chain: TLDR → body → raw source.

Page Frontmatter Schema

Every wiki page uses YAML frontmatter. type is required; the rest are optional:

---
type: concept              # REQUIRED. Open string: person, project, concept, library, decision, playbook, ...
resource: https://...      # Canonical URI to the authoritative external source this page describes
tldr: One-sentence summary optimised for LLM reading
confidence: 0.0–1.0      # Source corroboration score
quality: 0.0–1.0          # Self-evaluation (below 0.7 → flagged)
supersedes: path/to/old.md
superseded_by: path/to/new.md
last_updated: YYYY-MM-DD
freshness_window_days: 90 # Days before considered stale
retention: high|medium|low
---

• type — required; unregistered string, new values always valid, readers tolerate unrecognized ones
• resource — optional pointer to the live/authoritative source, kept separate from the wiki's own commentary
• confidence — set on write, decays with time, reinforced by new sources
• quality — self-scored on write, pages below 0.7 flagged for review
• supersedes / superseded_by — when new info replaces old, link them
• freshness_window_days — pages older than this get flagged during lint
• retention — low pages are archived after 2× freshness window

wiki/index.md alone also carries kb_schema_version (e.g. "1.1"), declaring which revision of this schema the wiki was authored against — bump minor for additive optional fields, major for breaking changes.

Entity Extraction & Knowledge Graph

During ingest, the agent extracts typed entities (people, projects, libraries, concepts, systems) and stores them as pages in wiki/entities/. Typed relationships (uses, depends_on, caused, contradicts, supersedes) are recorded in wiki/graph/edges.json. Queries can walk the graph to discover connected pages (e.g. "what depends on Redis?").

Recursive Index & Log Convention

Any wiki/ subdirectory that groups multiple pages (entities/, graph/, future topic folders) keeps its own index.md — a plain link list, no frontmatter — so subdirectory navigation stays lazy instead of requiring a full scan. A subdirectory can also keep its own log.md once it has enough independent history; wiki/log.md stays the root-level rollup and never duplicates a change a subdirectory log already recorded.

Dual-Linking (Wikilinks + Markdown)

Every cross-reference uses both [[Wikilinks]] (Obsidian-compatible) and standard [markdown](path.md) links. Works in Obsidian graph view, GitHub rendering, and CLI tools. Upstream references use full relative paths: linked/<name>/... or libs/<name>/.... Intra-wiki references prefer project-root-absolute paths (/wiki/entities/foo.md) over relative ones, so links survive later file moves.

Self-Healing Lint

Periodically (or on demand), the agent health-checks the wiki:

• Conformance — flags any page missing parseable frontmatter or a type field
• Freshness — flags pages past their freshness_window_days
• Confidence decay — reduces confidence on unreinforced pages
• Retention sweep — archives retention: low pages past 2× window
• Supersession detection — finds contradictions, links old→new
• Orphan detection — finds pages with no inbound links
• Graph consistency — verifies all edges point to existing entities
• Index/log consistency — verifies every subdirectory has an index.md and no change is double-logged
• Error Book — records systemic issues with root cause and fix

Auto-fixes what it can (broken links, missing backlinks, stale flags).

Conflict Resolution (Supersession)

When new information contradicts an existing page, the agent adds supersedes / superseded_by links. The old page is preserved but marked stale. Version control for knowledge, not just files.

Quality Scoring

Every page gets a quality score (0.0–1.0) on write, based on structure, source citations, and consistency with the rest of the wiki. Pages below 0.7 are flagged for review or rewritten in the next lint pass.

Error Book

Systematic errors (orphan links, formatting issues, cross-page contradictions) are recorded in wiki/error-book.md with root cause, applied fix, and a reusable constraint to prevent recurrence. Two-layer repair:

• Layer 1 — deterministic auto-fix for structural issues
• Layer 2 — agent reasoning pass for semantic/cross-page issues

Automation Hooks

• New source → auto-ingest on next "Ingest" command
• Session start → load index + latest workload summary
• Session end → compress observations into workload/
• Query → file back valuable answers as wiki pages
• Memory write → check contradictions, trigger supersession
• Schedule → periodic lint, consolidation, retention decay

Demand-Driven Context (DDC)

The wiki grows based on actual agent failures rather than upfront curation:

1. Agent can't answer → identifies missing knowledge
2. Proposes minimal entity/page to fill the gap
3. User approves or provides source material
4. Next ingest incorporates it

Converges to a stable KB after ~20–30 cycles.

Session Summaries

After every conversational action, the agent appends to workload/YYYY-MM-DD_summary.md. This provides continuity between sessions and a browsable history of how the KB evolved. The agent reads the latest summary on session start to pick up where it left off.

Change Log

Every wiki modification is immediately logged in wiki/log.md in reverse chronological order (most recent first), recording what changed, why, and the source.

OKF Export (on demand)

The wiki can be exported as an Open Knowledge Format v0.1-conformant bundle at outputs/okf/, consumable by any generic OKF tool (e.g. Google's reference graph visualizer) without disturbing the richer internal schema (confidence/quality/retention/supersedes/dual-linking) that OKF doesn't natively understand. Implemented as a Claude Code Skill — see .agents/skills/ckb-export-okf/SKILL.md — rather than baked into CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md, so the mapping ruleset only loads into context when actually invoked. outputs/okf/ is gitignored — it's a fully-regenerated build artifact, so each machine/tool regenerates it on demand rather than carrying it in git history.

Starlight Export (on demand)

The wiki can also be exported into an Astro + Starlight-consumable form at outputs/starlight/, producing a human-readable documentation website — unlike the OKF export, which targets machine/tool consumption. A deterministic Python script (scripts/export_starlight.py) handles frontmatter remapping, dual-link collapsing, wikilink resolution, asset copying, and sidebar generation; the agent's job is just to ask the two setup questions (export scope: full runnable scaffold vs. content-only; whether to include the log/error-book meta pages) and relay the script's report. Also on-demand and skill-only — see .agents/skills/ckb-export-starlight/SKILL.md. Like outputs/okf/, outputs/starlight/ is gitignored as a regenerated build artifact.

Guided Onboarding Tours (on demand)

Ask "onboard me on X" (or "where do I start with X", "mini tour of X") to get a short, read-only guided reading order: an overview paragraph plus an ordered list of wiki pages to read, built by walking the knowledge graph outward from the best-matching page (foundations first, then the topic itself, then what builds on it). Never writes to wiki/. See .agents/skills/ckb-onboard-me/SKILL.md.

Project Summary (on demand)

Ask for "a project summary" (or "where do things stand", "catch me up on the project") to regenerate PROJECT-OVERVIEW.md at the repo root — a one-to-two-page snapshot (overview, project state, actions & status, risks, assumptions) synthesized entirely from the current wiki/ contents and its knowledge graph. Always overwritten in full on re-run, never hand-appended to. See .agents/skills/ckb-project-summary/SKILL.md.

Git Sync (on demand)

This repo's own git history can be reconciled with its origin remote on demand: local changes get committed, remote changes get pulled and merged, any conflicts are presented to the user file-by-file to resolve, then the result is pushed automatically. Say "sync changes" to trigger it. Also implemented as a Claude Code Skill — see .claude/skills/ckb-sync-changes/SKILL.md — and deliberately distinct from the content-level "Sync the wiki" / "Ingest" workflow, which processes raw/inbox/ into structured wiki/ pages and has nothing to do with git.

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Quick Start

1. Mount upstream KBs:

   ln -s /path/to/other-kb ./linked/my-upstream
   git clone https://github.com/org/external-kb ./libs/external-kb
   

2. Drop raw material into raw/inbox/ (notes, links, articles).

3. Tell an agent to "Ingest" — it processes the inbox, consults the cascade, extracts entities, and writes structured markdown into wiki/.

4. Ask questions — the agent uses the index for routing, TLDRs for quick answers, and the graph for relationship discovery.

5. Periodically ask to "Lint" — the agent health-checks everything, auto-fixes what it can, and reports issues.

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Agent Instruction Files

File	Purpose
AGENTS.md	Full instruction for any AI coding agent
CLAUDE.md	Symlink to AGENTS.md, auto-detected by Claude Code

Skills live in one shared location, .agents/skills/, so any agent tooling that reads that convention picks them up. .claude/skills is a symlink to .agents/skills — Claude Code sees the same skill set without a second copy to keep in sync.

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Tips

• Upstream KBs (linked/ and libs/) are never modified by agents.
• To correct upstream content, write the correct version in wiki/ — it wins.
• Use raw/inbox/ for anything unprocessed; the agent clears it on ingest.
• The wiki/index.md routing table is the most important file — keep it current.
• Confidence, quality, and freshness let you trust the right content and flag the rest for review.
• The tmp/ and libs/ directories are gitignored. outputs/ itself is tracked, but its regenerated build subdirectories, outputs/okf/ and outputs/starlight/, are gitignored — each is fully reproducible from wiki/ on demand, so there's nothing to reconcile by carrying it in git history. Commit other, hand-maintained artifacts under outputs/ as normal.