source-add

name	source-add
description	Add a source to your Mnemon knowledge library — articles, YouTube videos, podcasts, books, ideas. Captures content and generates a structured extract with personal context framing. Use when the user provides a URL to save, says "add source", "capture this", "save this article/video/podcast", or wants to process any content into their knowledge library.

/source-add — Capture a Source

Add a source to the knowledge library. The gateway fetches content, applies an extraction template, and generates structured source.md + extract.md in the vault.

Usage Examples

/source-add https://example.com/article
/source-add --url https://youtube.com/watch?v=abc123
/source-add --origin audio --url https://podcast.example.com/episode.mp3
/source-add --origin idea --title "My insight about X"
/source-add --origin book --title "Book Title" --author "Author Name"
/source-add --url https://spa-site.com/ --render     # JS-heavy SPA: pre-render via headless Chrome
/source-add --file ~/Downloads/paper.pdf             # local PDF: auto-detected, Read tool extracts
/source-add --url https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.12345.pdf   # remote PDF: auto-detected, downloaded to /tmp

Parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
--url <url>	For URL sources	—	Source URL (YouTube / .pdf auto-detected)
--file <path>	For local files	—	Local file path (audio or PDF, auto-detected by extension)
--origin <type>	Auto-detected	From URL/file	url, youtube, audio, pdf, text, book, idea
--title <title>	For text/book/idea	Inferred	Source title
--author <name>	No	Inferred	Source author
--source-type <type>	No	From origin	article, video, podcast, book, paper, idea, conversation
--intent <text>	No	none	Why you're capturing this
--context <ctx>	No	personal	personal or mc
--render	No	off	Pre-render URL via Chrome headless (for SPAs / client-side-rendered pages). Requires Google Chrome or Chromium.

Source archival

When archive_dir is configured in mnemon.yaml, Mnemon archives original source material before extraction. Every origin type is covered:

Origin	What's archived	Format
pdf	PDF file	.pdf
audio	Audio file	.mp3/.m4a/.wav
youtube	Transcript text	.txt
url	Fetched page (best-effort)	.html
render	Chrome DOM dump	.txt
text/idea	Stdin content	.txt

Archive path appears in source.md frontmatter (archive: <filename>). For local files, origin_path: records the original location. Configure archive_dir in mnemon.yaml to enable (any directory path — iCloud, NAS, local folder).

PDF capture

Both local PDFs (--file paper.pdf) and remote PDFs (--url https://.../x.pdf) auto-detect as origin=pdf (source_type=paper).

Extraction uses Claude Code's native Read tool — no pypdf/pdftotext preprocessing. This handles text, layout, tables, and images/OCR content that CLI tools would miss. No --render / --whisper needed.

Page count lands in frontmatter (pages: N). For PDFs with heavy image/figure content, the extract describes the visual layout where relevant.

When to use --render

Plain HTTP fetch returns empty <div id="root"> for client-side-rendered apps (React/Vue/Svelte SPAs). Symptoms when you should retry with --render:

• Extract is suspiciously short (hero/tagline only, no body content)
• Source is a landing page, docs site, or dashboard built as a SPA
• You see the page fine in browser but extract is mostly meta tags

Pass --render and Mnemon pre-renders via Chrome headless (~2-5s latency), keeping the URL canonical in frontmatter. Falls back with a clear error if Chrome/Chromium isn't installed.

Do NOT use --render reflexively — default fast path is fine for 90% of web content. Use when you see SPA symptoms.

How to Execute

1. Build the command from user's input. If the user just provides a URL, that's sufficient — origin and source_type are auto-detected.

2. Call the gateway via the Bash tool:

${MNEMON_HOME:-~/Mnemon}/bin/knowledge-gateway.sh source-add --url "<url>" [--origin <origin>] [--title "<title>"] [--author "<author>"] [--intent "<intent>"]

3. Parse RESULT lines from the output:

   • RESULT:path=Sources/<folder>/ — created source path
   • RESULT:status=extracted — extraction status
   • RESULT:title=<title> — extracted title

4. Show the user a concise summary:

Added: <title>
Path: <path>
Status: <status>

5. If the gateway fails, show the error message. Common issues:
   • "No mnemon.yaml found" → run ${MNEMON_HOME:-~/Mnemon}/setup.sh <vault-path> first
   • "Vault not found" → check vault_path in mnemon.yaml
   • Media extraction failed → check yt-dlp/whisper installation

For text/idea origins

If the user wants to capture text or an idea, they need to provide the content. Ask them to paste it, then pipe it to the gateway:

echo "<pasted content>" | ${MNEMON_HOME:-~/Mnemon}/bin/knowledge-gateway.sh source-add --origin text --title "<title>"