llmwiki-cli

A CLI tool for LLM agents to build and maintain personal knowledge bases.

Inspired by Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki.

Overview

The CLI is the hands — it reads, writes, searches, and manages wiki files. The LLM is the brain — it decides what to create, update, and connect.

LLM Agent (Claude Code / Codex)
│
│ shells out to:
│   $ wiki init my-wiki --domain "machine learning"
│   $ wiki write wiki/concepts/attention.md <<'EOF' ... EOF
│   $ wiki index add "concepts/attention.md" "Overview of attention"
│   $ wiki commit "ingest: attention paper"
│
▼
wiki CLI (pure filesystem + git)
│
▼
Wiki Repo (markdown files + .git)

Key principle: The CLI never calls any LLM API. It is a pure filesystem + git tool.

Install

npm install -g llmwiki-cli

This gives you two commands: wiki (primary, 4 chars) and llmwiki (fallback if wiki conflicts).

Quick Start

# Create a new wiki
wiki init my-wiki --name "My Notes" --domain "research"

# List your wikis
wiki registry

# Set the active wiki
wiki use my-wiki

Wiki Structure

When you run wiki init, it creates:

my-wiki/
├── .git/
├── .llmwiki.yaml          # Wiki config
├── SCHEMA.md              # Instructions for LLM agents
├── raw/                   # Immutable source documents
│   └── assets/            # Downloaded images
└── wiki/                  # LLM-generated pages
    ├── index.md           # Master index of all pages
    ├── log.md             # Chronological activity log
    ├── entities/          # People, orgs, products
    ├── concepts/          # Ideas, frameworks, theories
    ├── sources/           # One summary per ingested source
    └── synthesis/         # Cross-cutting analysis

Commands

Wiki Management

wiki init [dir] --name <name> --domain <domain>   # Create new wiki
wiki registry                                       # List all wikis
wiki use [wiki-id]                                  # Set active wiki

Reading & Writing (Phase 2)

wiki read <path>                                    # Print page to stdout
wiki write <path>                                   # Write stdin to page
wiki append <path>                                  # Append stdin to page
wiki list [dir] [--tree] [--json]                   # List pages
wiki search <query> [--limit N] [--all] [--json]    # Search pages

Index & Log (Phase 3)

wiki index show                                     # Print master index
wiki index add <path> <summary>                     # Add entry to index
wiki index remove <path>                            # Remove entry
wiki log show [--last N] [--type T]                 # Print log entries
wiki log append <type> <message>                    # Append log entry
wiki commit [message]                               # Git add + commit
wiki history [path] [--last N]                      # Git log
wiki diff [ref]                                     # Git diff

Health & Links (Phase 4)

wiki lint [--json]                                  # Health check
wiki links <path>                                   # Outbound + inbound links
wiki backlinks <path>                               # Inbound links only
wiki orphans                                        # Pages with no inbound links
wiki status [--json]                                # Wiki overview stats

GitHub Sync (Phase 5)

wiki auth login                                     # GitHub device flow auth
wiki repo create <name> [--public]                  # Create repo + wiki
wiki repo clone [name]                              # Clone repo + register
wiki push                                           # Git push
wiki pull                                           # Git pull
wiki sync                                           # Pull + push

How LLM Agents Use This

The generated SCHEMA.md in each wiki contains complete instructions. Here's the typical workflow:

Ingest a Source

wiki write raw/paper.md <<'EOF'
<paste full text of paper>
EOF

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...
EOF

wiki index add "sources/attention-paper.md" "Attention Is All You Need (2017)"
wiki log append ingest "Attention paper"
wiki commit "ingest: attention paper"

Answer a Question

wiki search "attention mechanism"
wiki read wiki/concepts/attention.md
wiki log append query "How does multi-head attention work?"

Multi-Wiki Support

The CLI supports multiple wikis via a global registry at ~/.config/llmwiki/:

wiki init ~/wikis/ml --name ml --domain "machine learning"
wiki init ~/wikis/personal --name personal --domain "personal notes"
wiki registry        # lists both
wiki use ml          # switch active wiki
wiki --wiki personal read wiki/index.md   # target specific wiki

Wiki resolution order: --wiki flag > cwd .llmwiki.yaml > walk up directories > registry default.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18 (or Bun)
• Git (optional, for version control features)

Development

git clone https://github.com/user/llmwiki-cli
cd llmwiki-cli
bun install
bun test
bun run dev -- --help

License

MIT