ingest

Read one or more files from ./sources/ and compile them into structured, cross-linked pages in ./wiki/, following natural-language guidance from the user.

When to use

• The user has accumulated several pulled sources and wants them digested into a navigable wiki.
• A research / writing task needs the corpus organized by concept / method / debate / entity rather than by raw source.
• The user names a focus or ontology for the synthesis ("one page per evaluation benchmark", "focusing on training tricks").

When NOT to use

• The user wants atomic claims as Zettelkasten notes → that's /distill.
• The user wants a state-of-the-art chapter draft → that's /sota.
• The user wants to audit a written document → that's /review.
• The corpus has fewer than 3 sources — ingest is overkill; suggest reading the sources directly.

Input format

The user passes natural-language guidance. Examples:

• "the paper at sources/2026-04-20-foo.md"
• "everything I pulled since 2026-04-15 about transformers"
• "the three mixture-of-experts papers, focusing on training tricks"
• "sources/papers/foo.md and sources/papers/bar.md, one page per evaluation benchmark"

Parse the guidance to determine three things:

1. Scope — which source files to read. Resolve explicit paths directly. For topic references ("about X"), grep within ./sources/ (body text + frontmatter tags:, title:, topic: fields). For time windows ("since YYYY-MM-DD" or "yesterday"), filter by frontmatter date: or filename date prefix. If the resolved set has more than 10 files, STOP, list candidates, and ask the user to trim before proceeding.
2. Focus — the angle to extract. If the guidance includes phrases like "focusing on", "just the X", "extract the Y", narrow the synthesis to that angle. Absence of narrowing means extract broadly.
3. Ontology — the shape of output pages. If the guidance includes phrases like "one page per X", "by X", "grouped by X", constrain output shape. Absence means choose ontology from content.

If any of the three is ambiguous beyond reasonable inference, STOP and ask one clarifying question before proceeding. Do not invent scope.

Contract

Write only inside ./wiki/. Read anywhere. Never modify sources — they are authoritative raw material.

Two kinds of output pages:

1. Per-source summaries — produced only when the source has artifact identity (a paper, book, talk, canonical article — signals: arxiv ID / DOI / ISBN / author list in frontmatter, or the source is clearly a bounded artifact). One file per such source at ./wiki/sources/<source-slug>.md, where <source-slug> matches the source filename without extension. If the file already exists, UPDATE it (do not duplicate); append today's timestamp to ingestion_runs: and refresh the body as needed. Skip the summary entirely if the source is a random webpage, pasted markdown, or otherwise non-artifact.

   When focus is narrowed (e.g., "focusing on training tricks"), the summary floor is waived — no source-summaries unless they are part of the focus.

2. Synthesis pages — free-shape, produced as the content warrants. Flat in ./wiki/ (no subfolders). Filenames are slugs from page titles (lowercase, hyphen-separated). The kind: frontmatter field distinguishes page types (entity, concept, method, debate, timeline, or any other value the material calls for).

Every page carries this frontmatter, always:

---
kind: <entity|concept|method|debate|timeline|source-summary|...>
sources: ["[[source-slug-1]]", "[[source-slug-2]]"]
created: YYYY-MM-DD
updated: YYYY-MM-DD
ingestion_runs: ["YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM", ...]
---

• kind — mandatory. For source-summaries, use source-summary. For synthesis pages, pick from the canonical set or invent as needed.
• sources — list of wikilinks to the source files this page draws from. For source-summaries, a single source. For synthesis pages, every source that contributed.
• created — today's date if new; preserve existing value if updating.
• updated — today's date, always.
• ingestion_runs — append today's ISO timestamp (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM) to the existing list; if new page, start fresh.

Additional frontmatter fields (aliases, tags, etc.) are permitted when useful.

Cross-link freely. Wiki pages link to other Wiki pages via [[other-page]]. Source citations live in the sources: frontmatter, NOT in body wikilinks (sources are metadata, not graph edges). Source-summary pages live at ./wiki/sources/<slug>.md; to reference one in prose, use [[sources/<slug>]].

Existing pages may be freely re-written. When new sources introduce new claims about an existing concept page, merge those claims in; split pages that have grown too large; merge overlapping pages. The whole wiki is regenerable. Do not be conservative about touching existing pages — the compounding value of the wiki depends on re-synthesis.

Process

1. Parse the guidance — determine scope, focus, ontology. If scope resolves to more than 10 files, list candidates and stop.
2. Read the sources — full body + frontmatter. Note source_type, title, date, any arxiv / DOI identifiers.
3. Read the existing wiki — at minimum ls ./wiki/ to know what exists. Read any page about to be touched or cross-referenced.
4. Plan the page deltas — decide: which source-summaries to write (respecting the artifact + focus rules), which synthesis pages to create, which existing pages to update. Briefly narrate the plan in your response so the user can interrupt if the ontology is wrong.
5. Write the pages — produce frontmatter + body for each. Be concrete and cite sources — every factual claim should trace to a source in the sources: list.
6. Report — tell the user what was parsed (scope / focus / ontology) and what was written (page deltas with paths).

Refusals and stops

• If guidance is empty or unintelligible → ask for guidance, do nothing.
• If scope resolves to zero sources → report empty result, do nothing.
• If scope resolves to more than 10 sources → list candidates, ask to trim.
• If a source file cannot be read → report the failure, ingest the rest.
• If about to write a file whose path is NOT under ./wiki/ → STOP. That is an error.
• If the user asks to modify sources or write outside ./wiki/ → refuse and explain the read-only contract on sources.

Example invocation

/ingest the paper at sources/2026-04-20-new-llm-paper.md

Response shape:

1. "Parsed scope: single file sources/2026-04-20-new-llm-paper.md. No focus narrowing. Ontology: agent-chosen from content."
2. "Reading the source … identified 4 concepts: mixture-of-depths, dynamic routing, conditional compute, expert-choice."
3. "Existing wiki pages: [[mixture-of-experts]] is relevant and will be updated."
4. "Plan: 1 source-summary, 3 new synthesis pages, 1 updated synthesis page."
5. Write files.
6. "Done. New: [[mixture-of-depths]], [[dynamic-routing]], [[conditional-compute]]. Updated: [[mixture-of-experts]]. Summary: [[sources/2026-04-20-new-llm-paper]]."

Anti-patterns

• ❌ Hand-writing prose in a source-summary that contradicts the source. Summaries are extracts, not editorials.
• ❌ Inventing wikilinks to non-existent pages. Either create the target page in the same run, or use plain text.
• ❌ Promoting a wiki synthesis page to canonical / evergreen status. Synthesis pages are regenerable; canonical knowledge lives elsewhere by user convention.
• ❌ Writing the same content to multiple pages. Each claim has one canonical home, with cross-links from elsewhere.