Wikipedia Discovery

Wikipedia discovery

Use the current wiki hostname (e.g. en.wikipedia.org) for all API requests unless you intentionally switch language wiki.

Helping someone learn (user-facing)

When the user wants to learn about something, steer them toward concrete articles (and sections by heading when helpful). In natural language:

• Name articles by title and briefly say why each is relevant to their question.
• Do not paste full URLs, do not use markdown links, and do not bullet raw links—readers use url_change on their own; your job in chat is titles + relevance only.

Behind the scenes, when it is time to open the mirror, use message_parent with a full Wikipedia url (optional # section / anchor per below); that string is not for display in the user-visible reply.

I have a phrase / topic — find articles

Search the index, return ranked titles/snippets, optionally narrow namespaces. Prefer REST search for simple JSON cards; use Action API list=search when you need Cirrus options, generators, or wikitext-era fields. Paging: Action list= modules return continue — merge those params on the next request until absent. REST search may use limit / offset where supported. Details: wikipedia-discovery/references/topic-search.md.

I’m on (or chose) this article — what’s next?

Use summary for a short lead, links / backlinks to move outward in the graph, extracts for longer previews, categories / random when exploration fits. Same continue discipline for any prop/list that paginates. Details: wikipedia-discovery/references/article-next-steps.md.

Changing the Wikipedia URL (message_parent / url_change)

When the mirrored page should change, call message_parent with:

{"type": "url_change", "url": "<full https URL on wikipedia.org, optional #section-or-id>"}

url must stay on Wikipedia (*.wikipedia.org / wikipedia.org). Query APIs first when you only need metadata; send url_change when the left pane should actually load that resource.

Section (scroll to heading): append # + heading with spaces → underscores, correct case. Example payload (for the tool, not for pasting to the user):

{"type": "url_change", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitten#External_links"}

Section headings (# fragment)

Append # + section heading with spaces → underscores (MediaWiki heading ids usually follow this). Case-sensitive; wrong casing may jump to the top. Fragile: renamed or removed headings break the target. If punctuation is odd, copy the heading’s id from the live DOM (mw-headline / stable anchor) instead of guessing.

Custom anchors

Template:Anchor (or other fixed ids) — the fragment is # + that id, which may differ from the visible heading string. Prefer copying #... from the browser once, or inspect the element’s id.

The left pane is an iframe; normal #fragment scrolling (heading / id) is what url_change should rely on for deep-linking inside the mirror.

The parent extension never reloads the full tab or the right (localhost) pane: only the left iframe navigates. history.replaceState updates the address bar only when url is same origin as the tab; another *.wikipedia.org host still loads in the left iframe but the tab’s visible origin cannot change without a full navigation (which we avoid).

Reference files