wiki-vault

Travis's personal knowledge vault — project plans, session notes, and a compiled LLM-maintained wiki. Two layers, four ownership domains, versioned in git, indexed in petalbrain Postgres, and embedded for semantic search via Ollama.

Where to start

File	Purpose
CLAUDE.md	The spec. Vault structure, page types, frontmatter, status vocabulary, git protocol. Agents read this first.
index.md	Navigation front door — links into Sources and Wiki indexes.
log.md	Append-only audit log of compile / lint / migration runs.

If you're an agent acting on this vault, read CLAUDE.md. If you're a human browsing, start at index.md.

Status (as of 2026-05-24)

• 88 source files across Dev / Venture / Homelab; 26 compiled Wiki pages (22 entities, 4 domain landings) + 2 synthesis pages.
• First steady-state compile since launch ran 2026-05-24, clearing a 34-source backlog (indexes rebuilt, 5 entities refreshed, the ai-memory-architecture synthesis updated for the petalbrain consolidation). The first lint pass ran the same night (broken wikilinks + session-note→session-notes fixes).
• 5 entities promoted that session: Wiki/Reference/trellis, Wiki/Reference/vault-mcp, Wiki/Homelab/petalbrain, Wiki/Homelab/knot-dns, Wiki/Dev/herbyeos.
• Compile cadence (planned, not yet live): an n8n workflow nudges via Google Chat when ≥10 new sources accrue or ≥7 days pass since the last compile. Depends on a wiki.compile_runs table and a one-line addition to the compile procedure's Step 8. See docker/n8n/workflows/wiki-compile-nudge.json.

Two-layer structure

wiki-vault/
├── Sources/           # Raw — input to the compile loop
│   ├── Dev/
│   ├── Venture/
│   ├── Homelab/
│   └── Reference/
└── Wiki/              # Compiled output — generated by wiki-maintenance
    ├── Dev/
    ├── Venture/
    ├── Homelab/
    └── Reference/

• Sources = raw project plans + session notes, written by Travis, Jenny, and LLM agents through vault-mcp.
• Wiki = compiled entity pages, topic landings, and synthesis — produced and maintained by the wiki-maintenance skill. Never written to directly outside the compile loop.

How it gets written

Path	Who writes it
Sources/<Domain>/<slug>.md	vault-mcp:create_artifact (project plans)
Sources/<Domain>/YYYY-MM-DD-*.md	vault-mcp:create_artifact (session notes)
Wiki/...	wiki-maintenance skill, during compile runs only
index.md, Sources/index.md, Wiki/index.md, <Domain>/index.md	Compile loop
log.md	Compile / lint / migration runs (append-only)

vault-mcp dual-writes: Postgres row in petalbrain.wiki for index + embeddings, markdown file here for canonical content. The repo is configured for HTTPS push to gitea via a PAT-backed credential helper — see vault-mcp/CLAUDE.md for the mechanics.

Git protocol

Every mutation lands as a tracked commit with a typed prefix:

Prefix	Source
mcp: <kind> — …	vault-mcp writes (project-plan or session-notes)
pre-compile: …	Snapshot before a compile run touches anything
compile: …	Compile run body — pages touched/created/promoted
lint: …	Auto-fixes from the linter

Two-commit pattern on compile runs (pre-compile then compile) so the diff of the run is reviewable in isolation.

Quick operational notes

• Don't edit Wiki/ by hand. The compile loop owns it. Edits get overwritten on the next run.
• Don't add tags silently. New tags need explicit user approval or 3+ pages of usage.
• Don't delete pages without confirmation. The compile loop has archive semantics — work through it, not around it.
• Status changes flow through vault-mcp:update_artifact when possible — that's what fires the Postgres NOTIFY that n8n turns into Trello card moves. Hand-edits to frontmatter skip the automation.

Repo

• Origin: gitea petal-power/wiki-vault (HTTPS push via vault-mcp's PAT credential helper).
• This vault is mounted into the vault-mcp container at /vault.