How It Works
Architecture
One engine, many vaults. No database, no embeddings, no server.
Three Layers
The idea is related in spirit to Vannevar Bush's Memex (1945) — a personal knowledge store with associative trails. The part he couldn't solve was who does the maintenance. The LLM handles that.
— Andrej Karpathy
Raw Sources
Immutable source documents. The LLM reads but never modifies. Source of truth.
vaults/name/raw/ The Wiki
LLM-generated markdown. Summaries, entities, concepts. The LLM owns this entirely.
vaults/name/wiki/ The Schema
Conventions document. Structure, workflows, frontmatter rules. Co-evolved over time.
vaults/name/CLAUDE.md Engine & Vaults
llm-wiki/
├── .claude/skills/ <- 25 skills
├── .private/ <- your private skills
├── vaults/ <- gitignored
└── CLAUDE.md
vaults/my-research/
├── raw/
├── wiki/
│ ├── index.md
│ ├── sources/
│ ├── entities/
│ ├── concepts/
│ └── comparisons/
├── log.md
└── CLAUDE.md
Obsidian
Direct file access, no MCP
Claude Code reads and writes files directly. Obsidian watches the same directory. No middleware needed. Add qmd for search at scale.
Claude Code --writes--> filesystem --renders--> Obsidian