Wiki Update

Wiki Update — Sync Any Project to Your Wiki

You are distilling knowledge from the current project into the user's Obsidian wiki. This skill works from any project directory, not just the obsidian-wiki repo.

Before You Start

1. Read ~/.obsidian-wiki/config to get:
   • OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH — where the wiki lives
   • OBSIDIAN_WIKI_REPO — where the obsidian-wiki repo is cloned (for reading other skills if needed)
2. If ~/.obsidian-wiki/config doesn't exist, tell the user to run bash setup.sh from their obsidian-wiki repo first.
3. Read $OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH/.manifest.json to check if this project has been synced before.
4. Read $OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH/index.md to know what the wiki already contains.

Step 1: Understand the Project

Figure out what this project is by scanning the current working directory:

• README.md, docs/, any markdown files
• Source structure (frameworks, languages, key abstractions)
• package.json, pyproject.toml, go.mod, Cargo.toml or whatever defines the project
• Git log (focus on commit messages that signal decisions, not "fix typo" stuff)
• Claude memory files if they exist (.claude/ in the project)

Derive a clean project name from the directory name.

Step 2: Compute the Delta

Check .manifest.json for this project:

• First time? Full scan. Everything is new.
• Synced before? Look at last_commit_synced. Only consider what changed since then. Use git log <last_commit>..HEAD --oneline to see what's new.

If nothing meaningful changed since last sync, tell the user and stop.

Step 3: Decide What to Distill

This is the core question from Karpathy's pattern: what would you want to know about this project if you came back in 3 months with zero context?

Worth distilling:

• Architecture decisions and why they were made
• Patterns discovered while building (things you'd Google again otherwise)
• What tools, services, APIs the project depends on and how they're wired together
• Key abstractions, how they connect, what the mental model is
• Trade-offs that were evaluated, what was picked and why
• Things learned while building that aren't obvious from reading the code

Not worth distilling:

• File listings, boilerplate, config that's obvious
• Individual bug fixes with no broader lesson
• Dependency versions, lock file contents
• Implementation details the code already says clearly
• Routine changes anyone could read from the diff

The heuristic: if reading the codebase answers the question, don't wiki it. If you'd have to re-derive the reasoning by reading git blame across 20 commits, wiki it.

Step 4: Distill into Wiki Pages

Project-specific knowledge

Goes under $VAULT/projects/<project-name>/:

projects/<project-name>/
├── <project-name>.md          ← project overview (named after the project, NOT _project.md)
├── concepts/                  ← project-specific ideas, architectures
├── skills/                    ← project-specific how-tos, patterns
└── references/                ← project-specific source summaries

The overview page (<project-name>.md) should have:

• What the project is (one paragraph)
• Key concepts and how they connect
• Links to project-specific and global wiki pages

Global knowledge

Things that aren't project-specific go in the global categories:

Page format

Every page needs YAML frontmatter:

---
title: >-
    Page Title
category: concepts
tags: [tag1, tag2]
sources: [projects/<project-name>]
summary: >-
    One or two sentences (≤200 chars) describing what this page covers.
provenance:
  extracted: 0.6
  inferred: 0.35
  ambiguous: 0.05
created: TIMESTAMP
updated: TIMESTAMP
---

Use folded scalar syntax (summary: >-) for title and summary to keep frontmatter parser-safe across punctuation (:, #, quotes) without escaping rules.
Keep the title and summary contents indented by two spaces under summary: >-.

# Page Title

- A fact the codebase or a doc actually states.
- A reason the design works this way. ^[inferred]

Use [[wikilinks]] to connect to other pages.

Write a summary: frontmatter field on every new/updated page (1–2 sentences, ≤200 chars), using >- folded style. For project sync, a good summary answers "what does this page tell me about the project I wouldn't guess from its title?" This field powers cheap retrieval by wiki-query.

Apply provenance markers per llm-wiki (Provenance Markers section). For project sync specifically:

• Extracted — anything visible in the code, config, or a doc/commit message: file structure, dependencies, function signatures, what a file does.
• Inferred — why a decision was made, design rationale, trade-offs, "the team chose X because Y" — unless a commit message, doc, or ADR states it explicitly.
• Ambiguous — when the code and docs disagree, or when there's clearly an in-progress migration with two patterns living side by side.

Compute the rough fractions and write the provenance: block on every new/updated page.

Updating vs creating

• If a page already exists in the vault, merge new information into it. Don't create duplicates.
• If you're adding to an existing page, update the updated timestamp and add the new source.
• Check index.md to see what's already there before creating anything new.

Step 5: Cross-link

After creating/updating pages:

• Add [[wikilinks]] from new pages to existing related pages
• Add [[wikilinks]] from existing pages back to the new ones where relevant
• Link the project overview to all project-specific pages and relevant global pages

Step 6: Update Tracking

Update .manifest.json

Add or update this project's entry:

{
  "projects": {
    "<project-name>": {
      "source_cwd": "/absolute/path/to/project",
      "last_synced": "TIMESTAMP",
      "last_commit_synced": "abc123f",
      "pages_in_vault": ["projects/<project-name>/<project-name>.md", "..."]
    }
  }
}

Update index.md

Add entries for any new pages created.

Update log.md

Append:

- [TIMESTAMP] WIKI_UPDATE project=<project-name> pages_updated=X pages_created=Y source_cwd=/path/to/project

Tips

• Be aggressive about merging. If the project uses React Server Components, don't create a new page if concepts/react-server-components.md already exists. Update the existing one and add this project as a source.
• Consult the tag taxonomy. Read $VAULT/_meta/taxonomy.md if it exists, and use canonical tags.
• Don't copy code. Distill the knowledge, not the implementation. "This project uses a debounced search pattern with 300ms delay" is useful. Pasting the actual debounce function is not.
• Project overview is the anchor. The <project-name>.md file is what you'd read to get oriented. Make it good.