| name | llm-wiki |
| description | Use when building or maintaining a persistent personal knowledge base (second brain) in Obsidian where an LLM incrementally ingests sources, updates entity/concept pages, maintains cross-references, and keeps a synthesis current. Triggers include "second brain", "Obsidian wiki", "personal knowledge management", "ingest this paper/article/book", "build a research wiki", "compound knowledge", "Memex", or whenever the user wants knowledge to accumulate across sessions instead of being re-derived by RAG on every query. |
| context | fork |
| version | 1.0.0 |
| author | claude-code-skills |
| license | MIT |
| tags | ["knowledge-management","obsidian","second-brain","pkm","rag-alternative","wiki","karpathy","memex"] |
| compatible_tools | ["claude-code","codex-cli","cursor","antigravity","opencode","gemini-cli"] |
LLM Wiki — Second Brain for Claude Code + Obsidian
Inspired by Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern (gist). This skill turns Claude Code (or any agent CLI) into a disciplined wiki maintainer that incrementally builds and maintains a persistent, interlinked Obsidian vault as you feed it sources. The knowledge compounds — cross-references, contradictions, and synthesis are already there when you query.
Core principle
Most LLM+docs workflows are RAG: retrieve fragments at query time, synthesize from scratch, forget. The wiki is compounding: sources are read once, integrated into a persistent markdown knowledge base, and kept current. You curate and ask; the LLM reads, files, cross-references, and maintains.
Obsidian is the IDE. The LLM is the programmer. The wiki is the codebase.
When to use
- Personal: track goals, health, psychology, journaling, self-improvement
- Research: deep dives over weeks on a topic — papers, articles, reports, evolving thesis
- Book companion: file chapters as you read; build a fan-wiki-style companion for characters, themes, plot threads
- Business/team: internal wiki fed by Slack, meeting notes, calls — LLM does maintenance nobody else wants to do
- Competitive analysis, due diligence, trip planning, course notes, hobby deep-dives
Do NOT use when: you need one-shot Q&A over a fixed document (use RAG), you don't plan to add sources over time, or you don't want Obsidian in the loop.
Architecture (three layers)
vault/
├── raw/ # Layer 1 — IMMUTABLE source of truth
│ ├── <source files> # Articles, papers, PDFs, images, data
│ └── assets/ # Downloaded images from clipped articles
├── wiki/ # Layer 2 — LLM-owned knowledge base
│ ├── index.md # Content catalog (LLM updates every ingest)
│ ├── log.md # Append-only timeline (## [YYYY-MM-DD] <op> | <title>)
│ ├── entities/ # Person/Org/Place pages
│ ├── concepts/ # Ideas, theories, frameworks
│ ├── sources/ # One summary page per ingested source
│ ├── comparisons/ # Cross-source analysis pages
│ └── synthesis/ # High-level syntheses, theses, overviews
├── CLAUDE.md # Schema + conventions (Claude Code)
└── AGENTS.md # Same content, for Codex/Cursor/Antigravity
- Layer 1 (raw/) — you own. LLM only reads; never writes.
- Layer 2 (wiki/) — LLM owns. It creates, updates, and cross-references pages. You read it.
