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 search "scaling laws"
|   $ wiki lint
|   $ wiki commit "ingest: attention paper"
|   $ wiki push
|
v
wiki CLI (pure filesystem + git)
|
v
Wiki Repo (markdown files + .git + GitHub)

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"

# Write a page
wiki write wiki/concepts/attention.md <<'EOF'
---
title: Attention Mechanism
created: 2025-01-20
tags: [transformers, NLP]
---
The attention mechanism allows models to focus on relevant parts of the input.
See also [[transformers]] and [[self-attention]].
EOF

# Add to index and log
wiki index add "concepts/attention.md" "Overview of attention mechanisms"
wiki log append ingest "Attention mechanism page"

# Search, lint, commit
wiki search "attention"
wiki lint
wiki commit "ingest: attention mechanism"

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

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

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

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

wiki auth login                                     # Authenticate with GitHub PAT
wiki auth status                                    # Show auth status
wiki auth logout                                    # Remove credentials
wiki repo list [--all] [--filter]                   # List your GitHub repos
wiki repo create <name> [--domain] [--public]       # Create repo + init wiki
wiki repo clone [name] [--dir]                      # Clone repo + register
wiki repo connect [wiki-id]                         # Connect wiki to new GitHub repo
wiki push                                           # Git push
wiki pull                                           # Git pull
wiki sync                                           # Pull + push

LLM Agent Skill Guide

Run wiki skill to print the full guide, or see docs/SKILL.md for the source. Covers workflows, command patterns, page format, and common gotchas for LLM agents.

How LLM Agents Use This

The generated SCHEMA.md in each wiki contains complete instructions. Here are the typical workflows:

Ingest a Source

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

# Create structured summary
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...
Links to [[transformers]] and [[self-attention]].
EOF

# Update bookkeeping
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 links wiki/concepts/attention.md    # see related pages
wiki log append query "How does multi-head attention work?"

Maintain Wiki Health

wiki lint                  # find broken links, orphans, missing frontmatter
wiki orphans               # pages nobody links to
wiki status                # overview stats
wiki commit "maintenance: fix lint issues"

Sync to GitHub

wiki auth login            # one-time setup with GitHub PAT
wiki repo create research  # creates private wiki-research repo
wiki push                  # after making changes
wiki sync                  # pull + push

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 search "neural networks" --all       # search across all wikis

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

Requirements

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

Development

git clone https://github.com/doum1004/llmwiki-cli
cd llmwiki-cli
bun install
bun test            # 192 tests
bun run build       # bundle to dist/wiki.js
bun run dev -- --help

DATA

License

MIT