GenWiki

An Incremental Personal Knowledge Base using LLMs for Obsidian

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GenWiki is an Obsidian plugin inspired by Andrej Karpathy's "LLM Wiki" concept. It aims to solve the limitations of traditional RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems—where search is ephemeral and knowledge doesn't compound—by using LLMs to incrementally build, structure, and audit a persistent personal knowledge base directly within your vault.

Unlike standard search tools, GenWiki parses your web clippings, merges new findings with your existing notes, structures them with bidirectionally-linked wiki files, and continuously audits your knowledge base for conflicts and gaps.

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🌟 Core Features

1. Incremental Ingest (📥 Ingest Clippings)

• Scan & Parse: Scans your unprocessed clippings directory for raw web clippings.
• Smart Merge: Employs LLMs to read the new source material, look up your existing knowledge index, and decide whether to modify and merge existing Wiki pages or create new ones.
• Automatic Linking: Dynamically formats Obsidian internal WikiLinks ([[Entity_Name]]) to connect concepts automatically.
• Audit Trail: Archives the original clippings and registers audit logs to wiki/log.md.

2. Conversational Sidebar (💬 Chat Panel)

• Contextual Q&A: Asks questions based on your local compiled wiki. The plugin performs a fast, local index lookup to retrieve the top 5 most relevant wiki pages and feeds them to the LLM.
• Source Citations: Answers are fully referenced with standard wikilinks pointing to the source note (e.g., [[Tool_Obsidian#Features]]).
• Wiki Solidification (Save to Wiki): Explored insights or deep syntheses from your chats can be instantly saved as a permanent Wiki note with a single click. The plugin uses LLM to de-conversationalize the chat, creates aliases/summaries, and updates the local metadata index.

3. Knowledge Base Linter (🔍 Lint Wiki)

• Auditing: Performs health checks across your active Wiki nodes in batches.
• Issues Detected:
  • Contradictions: Highlights conflicts where different pages state conflicting facts.
  • Orphans: Detects isolated files that lack any inbound WikiLinks.
  • Stale Pages: Spots blank or underdeveloped placeholders.
• Audit Report: Outputs a thorough report containing precise improvement recommendations.

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🛠️ Architecture & Data Flow

GenWiki enforces a clean three-tier structure inside your wiki/ directory:

wiki/
├── _skills/           # Modular Agent Prompts (Ingest.md, Query.md, Lint.md, SavePage.md)
├── _agents/           # System SOP Specifications (CLAUDE.md)
├── _database/         # Flat-file Local Database Index (index.json)
├── index.md           # Visual, card-style personal knowledge map
└── log.md             # Action audit logs

Pure Local Text Database

To bypass iOS sandbox constraints and support frictionless cross-device synchronization (e.g., via iCloud, Git, or Obsidian Sync), all indexing metadata (aliases, summaries, backlinks, and claims) is stored in a lightweight flat JSON database (_database/index.json). No binary database or server infrastructure is required.

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🚀 Installation

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release files (main.js, manifest.json, styles.css) from the Releases page.
2. Inside your Obsidian vault, navigate to .obsidian/plugins/ (create the directory if it doesn't exist).
3. Create a subfolder named genwiki and paste the three files inside it.
4. Open Obsidian, go to Settings $\rightarrow$ Community Plugins, and toggle GenWiki on.

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⚙️ Configuration

Open Obsidian Settings and navigate to GenWiki under Community Plugins.

1. LLM Provider: Choose your preferred model provider:
   • Google Gemini (Default: gemini-3.5-flash)
   • Anthropic Claude (Default: claude-sonnet-4-6)
   • OpenAI (Default: gpt-5.4-mini)
   • DeepSeek (Default: deepseek-v4-flash, supports OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible endpoints)
   • Moonshot Kimi (Default: kimi-k2.6)
   • OpenRouter (Default: openrouter/free, handles unified model endpoints)
2. Model Selection:
   • Select a recommended model from the dropdown.
   • If you wish to use a custom or newly-released model, choose Custom, and enter the exact Model ID in the text field that appears.
3. Paths: Customize the source directory for raw clippings (default: Clippings) and the destination Wiki folder (default: wiki).

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📖 How to Use

1. Setup: Make sure your API key is configured. On the first startup, GenWiki automatically sets up the folder structure and default Skill templates in your vault.
2. Start Chatting: Click the CPU icon on the left ribbon to pop open the GenWiki Chat Panel on the right side.
3. Ingest Clippings: Drop raw Markdown clippings into your Clippings/ folder, open the Chat Panel, and click 📥 Process Clippings at the top. The plugin will automatically parse, link, and index them.
4. Solidify Chat: Ask questions in the Chat Panel. If the assistant provides a detailed answer you want to keep, click 💾 Save as Wiki Page beneath the answer to compile it into your permanent knowledge wiki.

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🧑‍💻 Customizing Prompts (Skills)

GenWiki is completely prompt-driven. You can inspect or rewrite the system prompts and instruction flows directly inside your Obsidian editor:

• wiki/_skills/Ingest.md — Incremental clipping extraction, linking, and contradiction checks.
• wiki/_skills/Query.md — Context retrieval guidelines and link citations.
• wiki/_skills/Lint.md — Knowledge audit heuristics.
• wiki/_skills/SavePage.md — De-conversationalizing text format rules.

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 License (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International). It is free to share and adapt for non-commercial purposes.