llmwiki-cli/docs/SKILL.md

llmwiki-cli — LLM Agent Skill Guide

You are operating a wiki CLI that manages markdown knowledge bases. You are the brain (deciding what to create, connect, and update). The CLI is the hands (reading, writing, searching, and syncing files). The CLI never calls any LLM API — it is a pure storage tool.

Storage Backends

The CLI supports two storage backends:

Backend	Description	Init
filesystem (default)	Plain markdown files on disk, no versioning	wiki init my-wiki
git	Filesystem + auto-commit + auto-push to GitHub	wiki init my-wiki --backend git --git-token <pat>

• filesystem: Simplest. Pages are .md files. No versioning.
• git: Every wiki write and wiki append auto-commits and auto-pushes. Init with --git-token can auto-create a public wiki-<name> repo; the PAT is not saved in .llmwiki.yaml (use LLMWIKI_GIT_TOKEN, GITHUB_TOKEN, or GIT_TOKEN for later pushes). PAT needs workflow scope (or fine-grained equivalent) to push .github/workflows/wiki-viz.yml. Omit --git-token for local-only git.
• Profiles: wiki profile use <slug>, --profile, LLMWIKI_PROFILE, or profile in .llmwiki.yaml choose a namespace. Files are stored under profiles/<slug>/ in the wiki directory. Not a security boundary on shared disks.

Critical Patterns

stdin via heredoc

write and append read from stdin. Always pipe content with a heredoc:

wiki write wiki/concepts/attention.md <<'EOF'
---
title: Attention Mechanism
created: 2025-01-20
tags: [transformers, NLP]
---
Content here. Link to [[self-attention]] and [[transformers]].
EOF

Use <<'EOF' (single-quoted) to prevent shell variable expansion inside content.

Paths are relative to wiki root

All page paths are relative to the wiki root directory:

wiki read wiki/concepts/attention.md      # correct
wiki read /home/user/my-wiki/wiki/concepts/attention.md  # wrong

Wikilinks

• [[page-name]] — resolved by filename across all wiki directories
• [[page-name|Display Text]] — link with custom display text
• Resolution order: exact path → wiki/ prefix → subdirectories → filename match anywhere

Page format

Every wiki page should have YAML frontmatter:

---
title: Page Title
created: YYYY-MM-DD
updated: YYYY-MM-DD
tags: [tag1, tag2]
source: URL or description
---

Page content here. Use [[wikilinks]] to connect pages.

File naming

• Use kebab-case: my-topic-name.md
• One topic per file — split large topics into sub-pages

Directory structure

.github/              # Only with --backend git (--viz, default)
  workflows/
    wiki-viz.yml      # GitHub Actions → GitHub Pages visualization
scripts/              # Only with --backend git (--viz, default)
  build-graph.js      # Builds graph.json from wikilinks
  build-site.js       # Generates d3-force interactive graph
raw/                  # Immutable source documents (paste originals here)
  assets/             # Downloaded images and files
wiki/                 # LLM-generated pages (all knowledge lives here)
  index.md            # Master index — update when adding/removing pages
  log.md              # Activity log — append after every action
  entities/           # People, orgs, products
  concepts/           # Ideas, frameworks, theories
  sources/            # One summary per ingested source
  synthesis/          # Cross-cutting analysis

Workflows

Ingest a source

# 1. Save raw source (immutable)
wiki write raw/attention-paper.md <<'EOF'
<full text of paper>
EOF

# 2. Create structured summary page
wiki write wiki/sources/attention-paper.md <<'EOF'
---
title: Attention Is All You Need
created: 2025-01-20
tags: [transformers, attention, NLP]
source: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762
---
Summary of the attention paper...
See [[transformers]] and [[self-attention]].
EOF

# 3. Create/update entity and concept pages as needed
wiki write wiki/concepts/transformers.md <<'EOF'
---
title: Transformers
created: 2025-01-20
tags: [architecture, deep-learning]
---
The Transformer architecture...
EOF

# 4. Update bookkeeping
wiki index add "sources/attention-paper.md" "Attention Is All You Need (2017)"
wiki index add "concepts/transformers.md" "Transformer architecture overview"
wiki log append ingest "Attention paper and transformer concepts"

# Done — git backend auto-commits on write

Answer a question using the wiki

# 1. Search for relevant pages
wiki search "attention mechanism"

# 2. Read top results
wiki read wiki/concepts/attention.md

# 3. Follow links to gather more context
wiki links wiki/concepts/attention.md
wiki read wiki/sources/attention-paper.md

# 4. Log the query
wiki log append query "How does multi-head attention work?"

Maintain wiki health

# 1. Check for issues
wiki lint

# 2. Review what needs fixing
wiki orphans                         # pages nobody links to
wiki status                          # overview stats

# 3. Fix issues: add frontmatter, create missing pages, connect orphans
# 4. Log fixes (git backend auto-commits on write)
wiki log append maintenance "Fixed broken links and orphan pages"

Multi-wiki operations

wiki registry                        # list all wikis
wiki use ml                          # switch active wiki
wiki --wiki personal read wiki/index.md   # target specific wiki
wiki search "neural networks" --all  # search across all wikis

Command Reference

Wiki Management

Command	Description
wiki init [dir] --name <n> --domain <d> --backend <type>	Create new wiki (backends: filesystem, git)
wiki init [dir] --backend git --git-token <pat> [--git-repo owner/repo]	Create git-backed wiki with GitHub sync + visualization
wiki init [dir] --backend git --no-viz	Create git-backed wiki without visualization
wiki init [existing-dir] --viz	Add visualization to existing git wiki
wiki registry	List all registered wikis
wiki use [wiki-id]	List wikis or set active wiki

Reading & Writing

Command	Description
wiki read <path>	Print page content to stdout
wiki write <path>	Write stdin to page (create or overwrite)
wiki append <path>	Append stdin to existing page
wiki list [dir] [--tree] [--json]	List pages (optionally as tree or JSON)
wiki search <query> [-l N] [--all] [--json]	Full-text search with ranking

Index & Log

Command	Description
wiki index show	Print master index
wiki index add <path> <summary>	Add entry to index
wiki index remove <path>	Remove entry from index
wiki log show [--last N] [--type T]	Print log entries (filter by count/type)
wiki log append <type> <message>	Append log entry (types: ingest, query, maintenance, etc.)

Health & Links

Command	Description
wiki lint [--json]	Check health: broken links, orphans, missing frontmatter, index gaps
wiki links <path>	Show outbound + inbound links for a page
wiki backlinks <path>	Show inbound links only
wiki orphans	List pages with no inbound links
wiki status [--json]	Wiki overview: page counts, link stats, recent activity, git info

Gotchas

1. Always use heredoc for write/append — these commands read stdin, not arguments. Running wiki write path.md "content" will hang waiting for stdin.

2. Always update index + log — after creating or modifying pages, call wiki index add and wiki log append. The wiki lint command checks for pages missing from the index.

3. append fails if page doesn't exist — use wiki write to create new pages, wiki append only for existing ones.

4. Wiki resolution — if commands fail with "No wiki found", either cd into a wiki directory, run wiki use <id> to set a default, or pass --wiki <id>.

5. search --all searches across all registered wikis, not just the active one.

6. lint checks five things: broken wikilinks, orphan pages, missing frontmatter, empty pages, and index consistency (pages not in index, index entries pointing to missing pages).

7. GitHub Pages visualization — git-backend wikis include a GitHub Actions workflow that builds an interactive graph on every push. Enable Pages in repo settings (Settings > Pages > Source: GitHub Actions). Use --no-viz at init to skip, or re-run wiki init <dir> --viz to add it later.