wiki

This skill creates the four scaffolding files at the root of a vault that turn it into a Karpathy-style LLM wiki. The pattern: an LLM ingests sources, files them as wiki pages, and maintains the catalog/log/hot-cache so future sessions can navigate and build on prior knowledge cheaply.

When to use

• The user has an Obsidian vault and wants Claude to start using it as a knowledge base across sessions.
• The user asks "/wiki" or "set up the wiki".
• A vault already has notes but no wiki/ folder, and the user wants to graduate it to a wiki.

When NOT to use

• The user just wants to write a single note → don't scaffold.
• The vault already has wiki-meta/catalog.md and looks healthy → suggest wiki-lint instead.
• The user is asking how the pattern works conceptually → explain, don't scaffold.

Pre-flight

Before scaffolding, you must know:

1. Which vault to scaffold in. Call mcp__obsidian-router__list_vaults first. If the user said "this vault" without specifying, use the default vault. If multiple vaults are configured, ask which.
2. Which mode the wiki targets — this affects only the seed of catalog.md and overview.md. Common modes:
   • personal — second brain, journals, projects, references
   • research — papers, concepts, hypotheses, methodology
   • business — competitors, customers, decisions, stakeholders
   • code — codebases, ADRs, runbooks
   • domain — anything else (let the user describe in 1 sentence)

If the user didn't say, ask in one short question. Don't enumerate all modes — give 2-3 likely ones based on context.

Steps

1. Verify the target vault is online via list_vaults. Bail with a clear message if online: false or missingApiKey: true.
2. Check whether wiki-meta/catalog.md already exists:

   mcp__obsidian-router__get_file({ vault: <name>, path: "wiki-meta/catalog.md" })

   If it returns 200 → the wiki is already scaffolded. Tell the user, offer to run wiki-lint instead. Stop.

3. Create the four scaffolding files in the wiki/ subdirectory of the vault (NOT at the vault root — the wiki must live under wiki/). Use mcp__obsidian-router__write_file with ifNew: true so we never clobber.

   ⚠️ Path discipline (do not deviate): every path argument to write_file MUST start with wiki/. The four files are:

   • wiki-meta/catalog.md
   • wiki-meta/journal.md
   • wiki-meta/hot.md
   • wiki-meta/overview.md

   If you write catalog.md, journal.md, etc. at the vault root or under wiki/, the wiki workflow breaks: the wiki-query skill won't find them (it looks under wiki-meta/), the wiki-lint skill will mark them as orphans, and wiki-fold won't see the log. The whole stack assumes the wiki-meta/ prefix for these 4 scaffolds (v0.12.0+). User content/pages stay under wiki/.

   Also create the session-journal directory wiki-meta/Sessions/ (capital S — the session-auto-journal hook writes there since v0.12.8), then initialise the OKF projections (v0.59.0, volet ②): call mcp__obsidian-router__refresh_okf_projections({ vault: <name> }) once. That writes the generated wiki/index.md (root, okf_version only) + wiki/log.md, and from then on the router keeps one index.md per content directory fed automatically (~15 s after each write). NEVER hand-write or wikilink those files — internal links keep targeting [[catalog]]/[[journal]].

   The templates/wiki-meta/ folder in this repo (<repo>\templates\wiki-meta\) ships the 4 scaffolds. The CLAUDE.md block (vault-root, see step 4) lives in templates/wiki/CLAUDE.md (path kept stable for back-compat — only the 4 scaffolds moved to wiki-meta/). Read the template via the local filesystem and substitute these placeholders before writing to the target vault:

   Placeholder	Substitute with
   {{TIMESTAMP}}	Current ISO timestamp (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM)
   {{VAULT_PATH}}	The absolute path of the target vault
   {{MODE}}	The chosen mode (personal, research, etc.) — only in overview.md if you decide to seed it

   If you can't read the templates (e.g., the user installed via npm without the templates dir), fall back to inline content — the contract for each file (under wiki-meta/) is:

   • wiki-meta/catalog.md — the map of maps: one section per area (directory) of wiki/, each linking to that directory's generated index.md, plus the few pages worth reading first. Initial structure must include sections matching the chosen mode. Include the invariant at the top: "A map of maps, not a list of pages. A new page in an existing area needs no edit here — the generated index picks it up. Only a new area earns a new section. Link indexes with markdown links ([Area](../wiki/<dir>/index.md)), never wikilinks — every index shares the index basename and Obsidian resolves wikilinks by basename." Never seed "add a row for every new page": that instruction is what grew one vault's catalog to 70 KB / 115 rows, unreadable in a single tool call.
   • wiki-meta/journal.md — append-only operation history. Each entry: ISO timestamp + verb + target page(s) + 1-line reason. Initial entry: "scaffolded by wiki skill on YYYY-MM-DD".
   • wiki-meta/hot.md — recent-context cache (≤500 words). What's been recently touched, key facts, active threads. Empty placeholder at scaffold time with structure: ## Last Updated, ## Key Recent Facts, ## Recent Changes, ## Active Threads.
   • wiki-meta/overview.md — executive summary of the wiki's domain. 100-300 words written by you based on what the user said about the mode/domain. If the user gave no detail, leave a stub: "Update me with a one-paragraph summary of what this wiki covers."

   Verify after writing: call mcp__obsidian-router__list_files({ vault, directory: "wiki-meta" }) and confirm all four files appear. If they ended up at vault root or under wiki/ by mistake, use move_file to relocate each to wiki-meta/<name>.md before continuing to step 4.

4. Write/append the canonical wiki CLAUDE.md block at the vault root.

   Source of truth: read templates/wiki/CLAUDE.md from the plugin install directory and use ITS content (with {{VAULT_PATH}} substituted) as the block. The template includes:

   • The wiki navigation rules (read hot → index → drill, append log, refresh hot)
   • The "always use obsidian-router MCP" reminder
   • The list of available /obsidian-router:wiki-* workflows

   This block embeds no library convention, and that is deliberate — decision conventions-livrees-par-le-modele (2026-09-11). Two different things are called "the template", and they are not in the same state:

   • templates/wiki/CLAUDE.md (this block) and templates/reference-vault-skeleton/CLAUDE.md in the plugin carry zero library conventions — scripts/conventions-drift.mjs pins both at an empty expectation, so one reappearing fails the suite.
   • the reference .template vault on the user's machine, whose root docs provisioning copies into a new vault, ships the four core conventions — roadmap-discipline, default-vault-health-check, wiki-query-first, path-disambiguation — per the same decision. A vault born from it already carries them; a vault scaffolded by this skill alone carries none.

   Nothing here needs to know which case it is in: the picker (step 6) reads the vault's file first, so present conventions arrive checked and labelled "already in place". The stylistic ones — auto-enrichment, heading-hierarchy, source-type, languages (which carries the vault's own value), description-frontmatter — are in no template; the picker offers them pre-checked, so the user refuses rather than discovers, and a vault whose owner accepts them ends up carrying them exactly as before. What stays in this block is navigation: how to read the wiki, the MCP reminder, the workflow list.

   This page used to say the opposite, and told you to add the auto-enrichment section yourself if it was missing — which would have put the convention back one scaffolded vault at a time, silently undoing the decision.

   The description requirement is NOT one of the optional ones. The template states it unconditionally, in its "Required frontmatter — description" paragraph, so it reaches every scaffolded vault without anyone opting in. That split is deliberate: the FIELD is a data contract the code acts on (the lint reports pages missing it, the generated indexes publish the sentence), while the description-frontmatter convention adds only the authoring guide — what to say, how long, how to quote it. Of the 16 vaults with a conventions file inspected on 2026-09-11, none contained that guide, though the lint applied to their pages.

   After scaffolding, the conventions picker RUNS (step 6) — it is the only thing that installs the optional conventions, so it is not offered, it is shown.

   If you cannot read the template file, inline by hand everything the list above names — the navigation rules, the MCP reminder, the workflow list — and the description requirement paragraph, which is part of the block and not a convention. Do NOT add a convention section to make the block look complete: an absent convention here is the intended state, and installing one is /obsidian-router:conventions install <id>, which owns the detection and the safe append.

   Use mcp__obsidian-router__write_file with ifNew: true if CLAUDE.md is absent. If it exists, use append_to_file BUT first check (via get_file) that the wiki block isn't already there — re-running scaffold should NOT duplicate the block.

5. Append the scaffold operation to wiki-meta/journal.md itself:

   - YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM — scaffold — catalog.md, journal.md, hot.md, overview.md, CLAUDE.md — initial wiki bootstrap (mode: <mode>)

6. Conventions picker — automatic, at the end of every wiki creation. Do not ask whether the user wants it; show it. (Exception: when this skill runs inside meta-attach-vault, the wizard's own step 1A.5 is this picker — run it once, there.)

   1. install_conventions({ vault, ids: [], dryRun: true }) — writes nothing; returns the resolved conventions file (path), the library (catalogue; entries flagged retired: true are recognised, never offered), detection (installed / duplicate per convention) and vaultLanguages. If it refuses because two conventions files exist, name them and ask which is the user's; do not pick.
   2. AskUserQuestion with multiSelect: true, one option per catalogue entry not flagged retired (several questions if one cannot hold them all). Pre-checked = every convention detection marks installed (suffix — déjà en place / — already in place) + the recommended ones: the four core (roadmap-discipline, default-vault-health-check, wiki-query-first, path-disambiguation) and source-type, languages, heading-hierarchy, auto-enrichment, description-frontmatter. A present convention is ALWAYS pre-checked, whatever the recommended list says — unchecking a present one means removing it, and a default may never propose a removal. Describe what each one DOES (the meta-attach-vault page has the reviewed wording). A retired convention detection finds installed (bilingual) is not an option: propose /obsidian-router:conventions migrate-bilingual after the picker.
   3. Checked and absent → ONE call: install_conventions({ vault, ids: [<all of them>] }) — with languages: ["<codes>"] when languages is among them: ask the owner the value first (default fr; ISO 639-1 codes, primary first), the tool refuses the whole call without it. Never paste snippet text, never append_to_file for this (no precondition — refused on shared vaults). Unchecked but present → do NOT remove silently: ask, then go through /obsidian-router:conventions remove <id> with its guards.
   4. Show the verified result: installed, alreadyPresent ("already in place", never "installed"), unknown, retired, verified and satisfied (false when an id named was unknown or retired — say which). verified: false → show problems and say the install is NOT confirmed. A conflict (409) → nothing was written; run the same call again. Link the file with clickToOpenUrl.
   5. If the user skips the picker, name what is missing in the final message, with /obsidian-router:conventions install <id>.
7. Confirm to the user:
   • Vault scaffolded
   • List of files created (4 + CLAUDE.md update)
   • Conventions: installed / already in place / verified (from step 6)
   • Suggested next step: "ingest your first source with wiki-ingest" or "ask me a question — I'll start filling the wiki as we go"

Anti-patterns

• Don't scaffold without confirming which vault.
• Don't overwrite an existing wiki-meta/catalog.md — bail and suggest wiki-lint.
• Don't invent vault content during scaffold. Stubs are fine. The wiki gets populated through ingestion and queries, not at scaffold time.
• Don't use Claude's native Write tool — it works only when the project IS the vault. Use mcp__obsidian-router__write_file everywhere so the skill is multi-vault and cross-project.

Output format

End your turn with a compact summary:

✅ Wiki scaffolded in vault <name> (mode: <mode>). Created: wiki-meta/catalog.md, wiki-meta/journal.md, wiki-meta/hot.md, wiki-meta/overview.md, CLAUDE.md updated. Conventions: installed <installed> · already in place <alreadyPresent> · verified <yes|no>. Next: try wiki-ingest <source> to file your first source, or just start asking questions — I'll grow the wiki as we go.