wiki-query

wiki-query

Synthesize an answer from the wiki's contents. Good answers should be filable back into the vault so explorations compound over time.

Pre-flight

Confirm the current directory is a wiki vault:

• CLAUDE.md, wiki/index.md, wiki/log.md all exist.

If any are missing, stop and suggest running wiki-bootstrap first.

Read CLAUDE.md before answering. It defines the page types, confidence scale, and conventions this vault uses. Citation format and filing rules come from there.

Step 1 — Locate relevant pages

Start with wiki/index.md. Use its categories and one-line summaries to identify candidate pages. This is fast and works well up to a few hundred pages.

If the index is not enough (e.g. the question is about a concept not yet catalogued, or the vault has grown past ~200 pages), also grep across wiki/ for key terms from the question.

Pull 3–8 candidate pages initially. Expand only if coverage is clearly thin. Do not pre-fetch the whole vault.

Step 2 — Synthesize

Answer using only content present in the wiki and the raw sources it references. Cite everything:

• Cite source pages via wikilinks: [[source-YYYY-MM-DD-short-title]].
• Cite entity/concept pages: [[page-name]].

Confidence rules:

• Your answer's confidence is capped by the confidence of the underlying pages.
• If the wiki lacks coverage on part of the question, say so explicitly. Never fabricate.
• If underlying pages contradict each other, surface the contradiction rather than picking a side silently.

Gap handling — if the wiki can't answer the question, offer one or both of:

• Specific raw sources to ingest to close the gap.
• A web search (only if the user enables it).

Step 3 — Choose an output format

Match format to the question. Obsidian renders mermaid, tables, and callouts natively — use them when they clarify.

Question shape	Recommended format
"What is X?" / "Tell me about Y"	Prose summary with wikilinks
"Compare X and Y"	Table
"What changed when?"	Timeline or dated list
"What depends on X?" / "What does X touch?"	List, or mermaid dependency graph
"Walk me through …"	Ordered steps
"Summarize everything about …"	Short narrative + bullet citations

Step 4 — Offer to file substantive answers

If the answer synthesizes multiple pages or contains reasoning that would be costly to re-derive, offer to file it:

File this as an analysis page? (y/n)

If yes:

• Write wiki/analysis/analysis-YYYY-MM-DD-short-title.md with full frontmatter (type: analysis, confidence matching the weakest underlying source).
• Include the original question, the answer, and a "Sources" section listing every wikilink used.
• Update wiki/index.md under the Analysis category.
• Append to wiki/log.md:

## [YYYY-MM-DD] query | Brief Title
Filed: [[analysis-YYYY-MM-DD-short-title]]
From: [[page-a]], [[page-b]], [[page-c]]

If no or the answer is a simple lookup: append a lighter log entry:

## [YYYY-MM-DD] query | Brief Title
Answered from: [[page-a]], [[page-b]]

Non-goals

• Do not invent entities not present in the wiki.
• Do not re-ingest raw sources mid-query — that is wiki-ingest's job. If you notice the wiki is missing a source the user has, tell them.
• Do not rewrite existing pages during a query. If something looks wrong, propose an edit or suggest wiki-lint; do not silently edit.
• Do not answer from general training data when the wiki has opinions. The wiki is the source of truth for this domain.