| name | wiki-lookup |
| description | This skill should be used when the user asks to "look up a Wikipedia article", "search Wikipedia for", "find the Wikipedia page on", "check Wikipedia about", or needs a quick fact or single article from the local Wikipedia data. For quick lookups and single-article reads — not for cross-domain exploration. |
Wikipedia Quick Lookup
Quick lookup skill for the local Wikipedia data lake (~7M articles stored as plain text).
How to Search
Find articles by title
rg -i "<query>" data/index/titles.txt | head -20
Find articles by category
rg -i "<query>" data/index/categories.txt | head -20
Word-boundary search (avoid partial matches)
rg -i -w "<query>" data/index/titles.txt | head -20
Use -w when a short query returns too many irrelevant hits — it matches whole words only.
OR search (synonyms, related terms)
rg -i -e "<term1>" -e "<term2>" data/index/titles.txt | head -20
Search for multiple terms at once. Great for synonyms or when the article title might use different phrasing.
Read a specific article
Find the path first, then read it:
rg -m1 "^<slug>\t" data/index/paths.txt | cut -f3
Then use the Read tool on the returned path.
Preview an article (without reading the whole thing)
head -50 data/articles/<prefix>/<slug>.txt
Scan the opening to decide if the article is worth a full read.
Search across article content
rg -l -i "<query>" data/articles/ | head -20
Returns file paths of matching articles. Narrow with title/category search first — full-text is powerful but slower.
Content snippets (see matches in context)
rg -i -m2 -C1 "<query>" data/articles/<prefix>/<slug>.txt
-m2 limits to first 2 matches, -C1 shows 1 line of context around each. Useful for checking relevance before a full read.
Count matches for relevance ranking
rg -i -c "<query>" data/articles/ | sort -t: -k2 -nr | head -10
Articles with more mentions are likely more relevant.
AND search (both terms must appear)
rg -l -i "<term1>" data/articles/ | xargs rg -l -i "<term2>" | head -10
Fixed-string search (disable regex)
rg -F -i "<literal>" data/index/titles.txt
Use -F when your query contains regex-special characters (dots, parens, brackets).
Worked Example — Simple Lookup
Task: "What does Wikipedia say about circuit breaker patterns?"
- Search titles:
rg -i "circuit.breaker" data/index/titles.txt
- Find path:
rg -m1 "^circuit-breaker\t" data/index/paths.txt | cut -f3
- Read the article with the Read tool
- Return the relevant information
Worked Example — Narrowing Down Results
Task: "Find information about ant colony optimization"
- Search titles:
rg -i "ant" data/index/titles.txt | head -20 — too many results (elephant, antenna, etc.)
- Narrow with word boundary:
rg -i -w "ant" data/index/titles.txt | head -20 — better but still noisy
- Try more specific:
rg -i "ant colony" data/index/titles.txt — found it
- If title search fails, try content:
rg -l -i "ant colony optimization" data/articles/ | head -5
- Preview before reading:
head -50 data/articles/an/ant-colony-optimization.txt
- Full read with the Read tool
Search Strategy
- Titles first — instant and gives you article slugs directly
- Preview before full read —
head -50 saves time on irrelevant articles
- Narrow before broadening — start specific, add
-w if too many results, broaden with -e synonyms if too few
- Content search last — powerful but slower; use after title/category search narrows scope
When to Escalate
If the task requires cross-domain connections, non-obvious structural analogues, or synthesising insights across multiple articles from different fields — spawn the wiki-explorer agent instead. That agent is purpose-built for lateral knowledge exploration.
Examples of when to escalate:
- "Find biological analogues to our load balancing problem"
- "What can ecology teach us about system resilience?"
- "Search across domains for patterns similar to consensus algorithms"
