toolboxmd/karpathy-wiki/karpathy-wiki-ingest

karpathy-wiki ingest (for detached runtime ingester only)

You are a detached wiki ingester invoked by the provider-aware runtime worker. Your job: process one already-claimed capture into wiki pages and complete it through the runtime helper. The main agent does NOT read this skill; it is loaded by the provider adapter's prompt.

Perform this ingest yourself. You must not launch or delegate the work to another model or agentic CLI. The runtime has already selected the provider, model, and reasoning effort for this run.

Deep orientation

Before any wiki write, run this 9-step orientation protocol. The goal: your view of the wiki is shaped by the actual page content, not by titles alone.

Steps 1-3: read the wiki's current state

1. Read <wiki>/schema.md — current categories, taxonomy, thresholds.
2. Read <wiki>/index.md (or <wiki>/<category>/_index.md per category) — what pages exist with one-line summaries.
3. Read the last ~10 entries of <wiki>/log.md — recent activity.

Steps 4-7: pick and read 0-7 candidate pages

1. Extract candidate signals from the capture. From the body and

frontmatter, gather:

• Words and phrases from the capture title (lowercase, split on

non-alphanumerics).

• Frontmatter tags: list (if any).
• For chat-only and chat-attached captures: meaningful nouns and

proper-noun phrases from the body. Use judgment — you're an LLM, not a regex; pick names, identifiers, technical terms, version numbers.

• For raw-direct captures: filename basename + the file's first

200 lines.

1. Score candidates against the index. A page is a candidate if ANY

extracted signal substring-matches (case-insensitive) its title, its one-liner, or the tag list on that _index.md line.

This is a deterministic substring + tag match — no embeddings, no semantic similarity. See "Why no embeddings / vector search" below for the rationale.

1. Pick up to 7 candidates ordered by:

• Signal-match count (descending — more matches = stronger candidate).
• Title length (ascending — shorter titles rank higher for the same

match count; they tend to be more general / canonical).

• Tie-break: alphabetical by title.

1. Read all picked candidates in full. Zero is a valid count for a

small or fresh wiki — see "Cold start" below.

Steps 8-9: decide and report observations

1. Decide using must-augment. Inventory object tokens in the capture.

For each token, count how many walked index entries it substring-matches (title, one-liner, or tag list on that line). If the token is named under schema Objects, or it has 6 or more index hits, the primary page is the best existing match: signal-match count descending, then shorter title, then alphabetical. Augment that page. Create a new page only when no object match exists. If you still create a page whose token already had 6 or more hits, log sibling-fanout. This capture does not compact the rest of the cluster. Write the rationale into the commit message later.

1. Issue reporting (during steps 5-7). While reading the index and

the candidate pages, observe issues. Append each as one JSONL line to <wiki>/.ingest-issues.jsonl via bash "${WIKI_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/wiki-issue-log.sh". Do NOT fix issues inline; report only — wiki doctor consumes the log later.

Example invocation:

``bash bash "${WIKI_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/wiki-issue-log.sh" \ --wiki "${WIKI_ROOT}" \ --ingester-run "${WIKI_RUN_ID}" \ --capture "${WIKI_CAPTURE#${WIKI_ROOT}/}" \ --page "concepts/auth.md" \ --type broken-cross-link \ --severity warn \ --detail "Links to /concepts/legacy.md which does not exist." \ --suggested-action "Remove link or create stub" ``

Issue types to watch for (the --type enum in wiki-issue-log.sh):

• broken-cross-link: page links to /path/foo.md but that file

does not exist.

• contradiction: page makes a claim that contradicts another

page you're reading or the capture itself.

• schema-drift: page has type: concept (singular) but

directory is concepts/; page lacks required frontmatter; page uses retired categories.

• stale-claim: page says "as of 2025-12 library X is at version

Y" and the capture or another source clearly indicates a newer version.

• tag-drift: same concept tagged two different ways across

pages.

• quality-concern: page's quality.overall < 3.0 was rated by

ingester (not human).

• orphan: page exists but is not linked from any _index.md or

other page.

• sibling-fanout: a new page was created even though its object

token already had 6 or more index hits.

• other: anything else worth noting.

Severity:

• error: blocks ingestion (rare — only if reading the schema or

a candidate page fails outright).

• warn: default. Issue noted; ingestion proceeds.
• info: observational; usually for tag-drift or quality-concern.

Each issue gets one JSONL line, ≤ 4096 bytes total. Over-length --detail is auto-truncated by the helper.

Cold start: wikis with ≤ 7 pages

When the candidate list from step 6 is empty or near-empty (the index has fewer than 8 pages total), step 7 reads few or no pages. The role guardrail in <wiki>/.wiki-config becomes the PRIMARY lens, not a backup tripwire:

• `role: project` or `role: project-pointer`: write specifics

about THIS codebase / instance / situation. Document the symptom, the pinpoint, what code path triggered it. Do NOT generalize.

• `role: main`: write general patterns reusable across projects.

Do NOT name specific apps or instances; abstract them.

In the cold-start state the index has insufficient gravity to shape the page; the role hint carries the lens. Defer cross-linking to a future ingester run when more pages exist.

Why no embeddings / vector search

The substring + tag match in step 5 is deterministic, scriptable, testable, and cheap. Embedding-based candidate selection is the "smart" upgrade but explicitly out of scope per CLAUDE.md ("do not add: vector search — defer until genuine scaling pain"). The substring/tag approach degrades gracefully — at large scale it hits more candidates than 7, but the ranking still produces a usable top-7. When that breaks, vector search becomes worth its complexity; not before.

Cost

3-7 extra file reads per ingestion (zero on cold-start wikis). Each page is typically 5-20 KB. The ingester is already reading the capture and the schema; this is the same order of magnitude. No measurable spawn-time impact.

Run record (per ingestion)

WIKI_RUN_ID is assigned before you start. Do not generate or replace it. The runtime wrapper owns the started, retry, failure, and completed records in <wiki>/.ingest-runs.jsonl; it also owns the heartbeat on WIKI_CAPTURE and the process-slot lease. Do not write run-history records yourself.

Use WIKI_RUN_ID only when another deterministic helper needs to tie an observation to the current run, such as wiki-issue-log.sh. A successful ingest is closed by the completion helper described in step 10. The wrapper writes completed only after it verifies both the archive and the provider's zero exit.

Role guardrail

Read <wiki>/.wiki-config to determine the wiki's role:

• role: project or role: project-pointer → you are writing for a

PROJECT wiki. Document specifics: how this app handles X, where bug Y lived, what we decided for this codebase. Do NOT generalize.

• role: main → you are writing for the MAIN wiki. Extract general

patterns reusable across projects. Do NOT name specific apps or instances.

The role field is the primary lens during cold start (≤ 7 pages in the wiki) and a sanity tripwire in mature wikis (the index pull is the primary lens once enough pages exist). See "Deep orientation — Cold start" above.

If the index pulls strongly toward instance-style or pattern-style writing (you read 5+ existing pages of one shape), trust the pull. The role hint then becomes a tripwire — "if you find yourself generalizing in a project wiki / specifying in a main wiki, stop."

Capture format

See <plugin>/skills/karpathy-wiki-capture/references/capture-schema.md for the canonical capture frontmatter contract — capture_kind enum, body floors, evidence rules, legacy backward-compat. Do not duplicate that schema here.

Page format

See references/page-conventions.md for frontmatter, body, targets, split, and schema overlay. After reading <wiki>/schema.md, apply every extra frontmatter key and extra body section that file names. If it names none, write only the plugin defaults.

All generated page metadata timestamps (created, updated, rated_at) must be real UTC values. In shell, generate them with date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ. Never append Z to local wall-clock output.

Body-sufficiency check (first thing — reject if too thin)

Before any other work, measure the capture body size in bytes (content AFTER the closing --- of frontmatter). Apply the per-capture_kind floor:

• raw-direct → no floor (body is auto-generated boilerplate).
• chat-attached → 1000 bytes.
• chat-only → 1500 bytes.

Legacy captures (no capture_kind): apply backward-compat per <plugin>/skills/karpathy-wiki-capture/references/capture-schema.md.

If body is BELOW its floor:

1. Add needs_more_detail: true to the capture's frontmatter.
2. Add needs_more_detail_reason: "body is <N> bytes; floor for capture_kind=<K> is <F> bytes".
3. Rename .md.processing → .md so the next session-start drain

preserves it for the main agent to expand. The dispatcher skips marked captures until the main agent removes both deferral fields.

1. Append to log.md: ## [<timestamp>] reject | <capture-basename> — body <N>b below <F>b floor.
2. Exit 0. Do NOT write pages. Do NOT commit.

A thin-capture rejection is a feature, not a failure.

Ingester steps

1. The capture is already claimed for you. Read ${WIKI_CAPTURE} (it's a .md.processing file). If for some reason ${WIKI_CAPTURE} is unset or missing, call wiki_capture_claim "${WIKI_ROOT}" to grab any pending capture as fallback.

1. Read the orientation files: schema.md, index.md, last 10 entries of log.md (per the Orientation section above).

1. Read the capture body.

1. Copy evidence with write-staging discipline (v2.4):

Atomic write to raw/ requires the staging dance (skip steps 1–2 and 7 if evidence_type is conversation AND the capture has no real path):

1. Copy the evidence file to <wiki>/.raw-staging/<basename> (NOT directly to raw/).
2. Compute the new sha256.
3. Acquire <wiki>/.locks/manifest.lock via

bash "${WIKI_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/wiki-manifest-lock.sh" ... for the manifest write + rename block.

1. Re-read the manifest under the lock. If raw/<basename> already exists with the same sha256, this is a duplicate — skip (apply the sha256 short-circuit below).
2. Update the manifest entry for raw/<basename> (origin, sha, copied_at, last_ingested, referenced_by).
3. Write the manifest atomically (.manifest.json.tmp + os.rename) — wiki-manifest.py build already does this.
4. Atomically rename <wiki>/.raw-staging/<basename> → <wiki>/raw/<basename> (POSIX rename is atomic on the same filesystem).
5. Release the lock.
6. If the source file is in <wiki>/inbox/<basename> (raw-direct via inbox queue), rm it.

Crash recovery: if the ingester crashes between steps 1 and 7, a file lingers in .raw-staging/. The SessionStart recovery scan SKIPS .raw-staging/ (it's a reserved dot-prefixed directory). Future cleanup is wiki doctor's responsibility.