Knowlery

Knowlery turns an Obsidian vault into a personal knowledge review space for Claude Code and OpenCode workflows. It helps initialize the vault, keep built-in skills and schemas in sync, review the current note, generate weekly atlases, and run vault health diagnostics.

In v0.3.5, bundled skills auto-sync on plugin load when the version changes, and SCHEMA.md is migrated in place so existing vaults pick up the newer knowledge conventions without a re-initialization.

Read the official documentation: https://jayjiangct.github.io/knowlery/.

Inspiration: LLM Wiki & BYOAO

Andrej Karpathy’s “LLM Wiki”

In LLM Wiki, Andrej Karpathy describes a pattern different from one-off RAG: instead of re-deriving answers from raw notes on every question, an agent incrementally builds and maintains a persistent wiki—structured, interlinked markdown that sits between you and your sources. New material is read, distilled, and folded into entity pages, topic summaries, and cross-links; the base is kept current rather than re-scanned from scratch each time.

Knowlery’s take is aligned with that maintenance story for your vault: it gives you the layout (KNOWLEDGE.md, SCHEMA.md, INDEX.base, entities/, concepts/, comparisons/, queries/), agent skills, and health checks so a coding agent can compile and maintain structured knowledge pages from your notes—while keeping a clear boundary (your free-form notes stay yours; the agent works the shared map). It is an opinionated, Obsidian-native way to operationalize the “LLM wiki” idea on the desktop.

BYOAO

BYOAO (Build Your Own AI OS) is a separate project: an OpenCode-oriented flow that turns Obsidian into an AI-powered “LLM Wiki” style knowledge base with global CLI install. Working on BYOAO is what made it natural to ask: what if the same ideas lived as a first-class Obsidian plugin—settings, setup wizard, skills, and health—without leaving the app? Knowlery is that plugin-shaped experiment: same family of ideas, different packaging (plugin UI + vault-side wiring for Claude Code / OpenCode).

Getting started (video)

▶ Full walkthrough (~3 min, with audio) · same file: Releases

Requirements

• Obsidian desktop.
• Community plugins enabled.
• Claude Code or OpenCode, if you want to run installed skills from the dashboard.
• Node.js and npm, if you want to browse or install skills from the external skills registry.

Knowlery is desktop-only because it uses local command-line tools and Electron desktop APIs.

During the setup wizard, Knowlery can detect whether Claude Code, OpenCode, Node.js, and the external skills CLI are available. On desktop, the wizard can optionally help install or prepare missing agent tools, and can optionally install Claudian directly into your vault without requiring BRAT. These steps are opt-in; if a tool is already installed, Knowlery skips it.

Agent chat in Obsidian (optional companions)

Knowlery focuses on vault layout, skills, rules, and health for agent workflows. If you also want a full agent chat inside Obsidian (sidebar, inline edit, multi-provider), consider installing one of these in addition to Knowlery:

• Claudian — embeds Claude Code, Codex, and related flows in the vault; file read/write and bash from a chat UI.
• obsidian-agent-client — brings agents in via Agent Client Protocol (ACP) (e.g. Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI) with multi-session and MCP support.

Install from Community plugins

Knowlery is available from Obsidian's community plugin directory.

1. Open Settings -> Community plugins in Obsidian.
2. Select Browse.
3. Search for Knowlery.
4. Install and enable the plugin.

Install beta builds with BRAT

BRAT is the Beta Reviewers Auto-update Tool for Obsidian. Upstream project: TfTHacker/obsidian42-brat (documentation: tfthacker.com/BRAT).

Use BRAT only when you want to test preview builds before they are published to the community plugin directory.

1. Install the BRAT plugin in Obsidian (from Community plugins, or build from the BRAT repository above).
2. Open BRAT settings.
3. Add Beta plugin and use this repository URL: https://github.com/JayJiangCT/knowlery (or the short form JayJiangCT/knowlery if BRAT accepts it).
4. Enable Knowlery under Settings → Community plugins.

Manual install

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Put those files in .obsidian/plugins/knowlery/ inside your vault.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Knowlery from Settings -> Community plugins.

What Knowlery Creates

During setup and normal use, Knowlery can create or update these files and folders inside your vault:

• KNOWLEDGE.md
• SCHEMA.md (knowledge taxonomy and page conventions)
• INDEX.base
• entities/, concepts/, comparisons/, and queries/
• .knowlery/manifest.json
• .agents/skills/ and .agents/rules/
• .claude/skills/, .claude/rules/, and .claude/CLAUDE.md
• opencode.json, when OpenCode is selected
• skills-lock.json
• .knowlery/activity/, when activity logging is enabled
• .knowlery/reports/, when Weekly Review generates an atlas
• .knowlery/requests/ and .knowlery/reviews/, when daily review polish is used

Knowlery may delete skill or rule files only when you use the corresponding delete or disable actions in the UI.

Permissions and Disclosures

Knowlery does not collect telemetry.

Knowlery reads and writes files inside your vault to create and maintain the knowledge base layout, bundled skills, rules, activity summaries, review requests, and generated reports listed above. It also reads Obsidian's configured plugin directory when detecting or installing optional companion plugins.

Network access is opt-in and feature-specific. The skill browser can call the external skills registry through npx skills ... when you search for or install registry skills. The setup wizard can download the latest Claudian release from GitHub when you choose to install that optional companion plugin.

Knowlery can run local CLI commands such as claude, opencode, node, npx, and skills when you explicitly use CLI-related features. These commands run on your computer with your user permissions. Knowlery does not send vault contents to those tools by itself; agent requests are created only from the actions you trigger.

Some companion tools or services used with Knowlery, including Claude Code, OpenCode, registry skills, or model providers configured outside Knowlery, may require separate accounts or paid usage. Knowlery itself is free and does not process payments.

Development

npm install
npm run build

The production build writes main.js. Release assets should include:

• main.js
• manifest.json
• styles.css

License

MIT (see LICENSE).