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🧠 Karpathy LLM Wiki Plugin for Obsidian
An Obsidian plugin that turns your notes into a connected, queryable knowledge base — the Karpathy LLM Wiki idea, built into the editor where you already write.
Obsidian Review Perfect Score • Zero-embedding graph retrieval • 10-language native • Works with every provider Local-first • No backend • GDPR-Friendly
English | 简体中文 | 繁體中文 | 日本語 | 한국어 | Deutsch | Français | Español | Português | Italiano | Русский
Official Site | Obsidian Marketplace | Blog | Discussions
🤔 Why this plugin? | 🚀 Quick Start | ✨ Features | 🌐 Ecosystem | 🛠️ Headless CLI | 🔍 How Retrieval Works | 🤖 Models | ❓ FAQ
← If this plugin has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee♥️ or drop a star🌟↗
📑 Contents
- Why this plugin?
- Is it for me?
- Quick Start
- Features
- Ecosystem
- Headless CLI
- How retrieval works
- Models
- FAQ
- Privacy
- Support
- Other projects
- License & Credits
🤔 Why this plugin?
You write notes. They sit in folders. Finding what relates to what means remembering threads you forgot months ago.
Other open-source reimplementations of Karpathy's LLM Wiki idea exist — but none of them ships as a one-click Obsidian plugin. Most are CLI tools, Claude Code skills, or separate desktop apps. We are the only one with native UI, in-vault storage, and Obsidian's own Graph View built in.
How we compare
| Karpathy LLM Wiki (this plugin) | nashsu / llm_wiki | SamurAIGPT / llm-wiki-agent | sdyckjq / llm-wiki-skill | atomicstrata / llm-wiki-compiler | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery & install | ✅ 5 min — One-click Obsidian plugin: Community Plugins → Install → pick provider → Ingest | ❌ 30 min+ — Compile/download Tauri binary, configure CLI | ❌ 15 min — Claude Code subscription + skill install | ❌ 10 min — Claude Code/Codex subscription + skill setup | ❌ 30 min+ — pip install + Python SDK + local server |
| Architecture & dependencies | ✅ Zero dependencies — no vector DB, no embedding model, no external processes (PPR over [[wiki-link]] graph, by design) |
🟡 Embeds Python runtime + sigma.js + sqlite; optional embeddings off by default | 🟡 Uses Claude Code's environment — not self-contained; no embeddings | 🟡 Requires separate platform runtime; no embeddings | ❌ Requires Python + embedding model + vector DB (mandatory) |
| i18n (UI + wiki output) | ✅ 11 languages (independent UI / output) | 🟡 2 (EN / 中文) | ❌ English only | ❌ English only | ❌ English only |
| LLM providers | ✅ 12+ (incl. Codex OAuth, Bedrock, LM Studio, Ollama, Anthropic-compatible, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, DeepSeek) | 🟡 OpenAI-compatible | 🟡 Subscription via Claude Code | 🟡 Subscription via Claude Code / Codex | 🟡 OpenAI-compatible |
| Retrieval & query pipeline | ✅ 5-stage cascade — Lex → LLM keyword → substring scan → LLM KB fallback → PPR expansion (truncates on first sufficient signal). Personalized PageRank (Haveliwala 2002) + Monte Carlo (Fogaras 2005) | 🟡 2-hop decay only (4-signal heuristic: Adamic-Adar + 2-hop) | ❌ Louvain community detection only | ❌ k-hop previews only (no LLM augment) | ❌ BM25 + semantic over chunks (no graph) |
| Graph visualization | ✅ Obsidian's native Graph View (built in, zero extra size) | ❌ Custom sigma.js + graphology in desktop app | 🟡 vis.js graph.html (separate file) | ❌ Custom sigma.js offline HTML | ❌ Read-only browser viewer |
| Wiki honesty | ✅ "Stage FALLBACK" banner when no wiki source matches your query | ❌ No equivalent | ❌ No equivalent | ❌ No equivalent | ❌ No equivalent |
| Published retrieval benchmark | ✅ PPR @5 = 27.1% vs pure-kNN 24.1% (only published number in this space) | ❌ 58% → 71% only with embeddings enabled, not in our apples-to-apples format | ❌ Not published | ❌ Not published | ❌ Not published |
Three things we chose on purpose, not by accident
- 🪟 Obsidian is the runtime. No terminal, no separate app, no Docker, no Python. Install from Community Plugins, click Ingest, the wiki lives in your vault from the first second. Obsidian's native Graph View renders your
[[wiki-link]]graph — built in, zero extra bundle size. - 🧭 Clean and self-contained. Zero dependencies. No embedding model, no vector database, no pip package — a single plugin that reads your notes, talks to an LLM, and writes wiki pages. Everything lives inside Obsidian.
- 🔌 Any model you already pay for. Anthropic, Bedrock, OpenAI, ChatGPT Plan (Codex OAuth), DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, LM Studio, Ollama, OpenRouter, Anthropic-compatible, custom endpoint — twelve-plus providers, none of them required to have an embedding endpoint.
🎯 Is it for me?
✅ Yes, if you:
- Want a 5-minute setup, not a 5-hour project. Install from Community Plugins → pick a provider → Ingest one note. No CLI, no Python, no separate runtime, no vector DB. You see wiki pages in
wiki/within seconds. - Want something clean and self-contained. The plugin has exactly zero external dependencies: no embedding model, no vector database, no pip package, no Docker container. It's a single Obsidian plugin that reads your notes, talks to an LLM, and writes wiki pages into your vault. Everything lives inside Obsidian.
- Want a queryable chat that answers from your notes — not the internet — with every answer carrying
[[wiki-links]]back into your knowledge graph. - Care about data sovereignty — runs fully local with Ollama or LM Studio, never touching the internet.
- Write in or read from any of 10 supported languages — the UI and wiki output language are independent (your wiki can be in Chinese while the interface is in English).
- Maintain the graph by writing
[[wiki-links]]— every link you write already enriches retrieval; no separate tagging/embedding/indexing step. - Want one-click maintenance — Lint health scan + Smart Fix All keep duplicates, dead links, and orphan pages in check without you hand-curating.
❌ No, if you:
- Want a general-purpose ChatGPT replacement — this plugin answers from your knowledge only.
- Need a RAG pipeline over PDFs / web pages / external corpora — we focus on the in-vault path (PDFs are supported as of v1.25.0).
- Are looking for a hosted SaaS — there's no backend, no server, no account.
🚀 Quick Start
-
Install. Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search "Karpathy LLM Wiki" → Install → Enable. Or visit the Community Plugin page and click Add to Obsidian.
-
Configure a provider. Open Settings → Karpathy LLM Wiki → pick a provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, ChatGPT Plan (Codex OAuth), etc.) → enter API key (not needed for local) → click Test Connection → Save.
-
Ingest one note. Two ways:
- ⌨️ Keyboard:
Cmd+P/Ctrl+P→ "Ingest single source" → pick any Markdown (or PDF, v1.25.0+) file. - 🖱️ Toolbar icon: Click the sticker icon in Obsidian's left ribbon to instantly ingest the currently-open note — no menu hunting.
Your first wiki pages appear in
wiki/sources/,wiki/entities/,wiki/concepts/within seconds. - ⌨️ Keyboard:
-
Query your wiki. Two ways:
- ⌨️ Keyboard:
Cmd+P/Ctrl+P→ "Query wiki". - 🖱️ Toolbar icon: Click the message-circle icon in Obsidian's left ribbon.
A right-docked side panel opens (Copilot-style) where you can chat with your wiki. Answers carry
[[wiki-links]]back into your knowledge graph. - ⌨️ Keyboard:

That's it. The plugin modifies nothing in your original notes — only creates new pages under wiki/. Both Ingest and Query wiki are pinned to the left ribbon for one-click access anytime. (Cmd on macOS, Ctrl on Windows/Linux.)
Core commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| 📥 Ingest single source | Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "Ingest single source" — pick a Markdown or PDF (v1.25.0+) file, get entity/concept/wiki pages. Also: 🖱️ ribbon sticker icon on the active note. |
| 📂 Ingest from folder | Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "Ingest from folder" — batch-ingest every note in a folder, with smart batch skip |
| 📑 Ingest multiple files | Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "Ingest multiple files" — pick a subset via a two-pane file tree (with live queue + per-file cancel) |
| 🔍 Query wiki | Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "Query wiki" — chat with your wiki in a right-docked side panel; answers carry [[wiki-links]]. Also: 🖱️ ribbon message-circle icon. |
| 🛠️ Lint wiki | Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "Lint wiki" — full health scan: duplicates, dead links, empty pages, orphans, missing aliases, contradictions |
| ⚡ Smart Fix All | inside Lint Modal — one-click causal-order repair with per-phase report |
| 📋 Regenerate index | Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "Regenerate index" — rebuild wiki/index.md with current pages and aliases |
| ⏹ Cancel | Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "Cancel current ingestion" or click the status bar — stops cleanly at the next batch boundary |
| 📊 Ingestion history | Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "View Ingestion History" — searchable UI for past ingestions, lint reports, maintenance runs |

| Before | After |
|---|---|
notes/machine-learning.md (a flat file) |
wiki/concepts/supervised-learning.md with [[bidirectional links]], aliases, source attribution, and an entry in wiki/index.md |
💡 Stay updated. New features, fixes, and performance improvements ship frequently. Settings → Community plugins → Check for updates, or enable automatic plugin updates. 📖 Detailed walkthroughs (installation, PDF setup, multi-provider notes, upgrades) are maintained in GitHub Discussions → Guides.
🌟 If this saved you setup time, a star on GitHub helps others find it.
✨ Features
📚 Knowledge quality
- 🔍 Entity & concept extraction — LLM extracts entities (people, orgs, products, events) and concepts (theories, methods, terms) into standalone pages. Granularity is configurable (Minimal → Fine, plus Custom) so you trade cost vs. depth.
- 🏷️ Mandatory aliases — every page ships with at least one alias (translation, abbreviation, variant) so cross-language duplicate detection works.
- 🔄 Tiered duplicate detection — Tier 1 (direct name match: cross-language, abbreviation, high-similarity titles) is always verified; Tier 2 (shared links, medium similarity) fills remaining token budget.
- 🧩 Smart merge & contradiction state — duplicates merge while preserving aliases; contradictions are flagged with source attribution;
reviewed: truepages are protected from overwrite. - 🎨 Custom tag vocabulary — define your own entity-type and concept-type tag lists in Settings → Wiki → Tag Vocabulary → Custom. The vocabulary is a schema injection hint for the LLM, not a write-time enforcement gate — small/local models may still drift, and the Lint diagnostic surfaces those pages so you can fix them. (Schema enforcement is being designed for v1.27.0+; see the design anchor.)
📄 PDF ingest (v1.25.0+)
- 🔌 Provider gate — Anthropic, OpenAI, and Bedrock handle PDF natively. For any other OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible endpoint, enable Force PDF Support in Settings → LLM Configuration → Advanced to let the plugin attempt the call. For local OCR on Apple Silicon, third-party extractors (MinerU, Docling, Mathpix, Adobe), and the full PDF ingest walkthrough, see PDF OCR Paths below and docs/PDF-OCR-GUIDE.md.
- 🗄️ Bounded cache —
.obsidian/plugins/karpathywiki/pdf-cache/stores converted Markdown keyed by content hash + model + converter version. Three-defense-layer housekeeping: 100 MB total / 1000 entries / 10 MB single-entry caps with LRU-by-mtime eviction. - 📝 Optional vault sidecar — Settings → Wiki Configuration → Wiki Folder → Write PDF Markdown to Vault writes
<basename>.pdf.mdnext to the source PDF (off by default — cache-only is the default). - 🛡️ Verbatim transcriber prompt — OCR-style conversion with
[illegible]/[figure: ...]anti-hallucination markers; markdown-fence-wrapping from small local models is auto-cleaned before cache write.
📄 PDF OCR Paths
Three paths, pick what fits your setup:
- ☁️ Cloud provider with native PDF support — Anthropic, OpenAI, or AWS Bedrock read PDFs out of the box. Just ingest; no extra setup. For any other OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible endpoint, enable Force PDF Support in Settings → LLM Configuration → Advanced to let the plugin attempt the call.
- 🖥️ Local OCR on Apple Silicon — oMLX integrates Microsoft Markitdown as a built-in PDF→Markdown backend. Enable Markitdown in oMLX, load Baidu Unlimited-OCR (3B / 570M-active, open-sourced 2026-06) as the vision model, point the plugin at oMLX as a Custom OpenAI-Compatible provider, turn on Force PDF Support, and pick the multimodal model oMLX is serving. The PDF never leaves your machine.
- 🛠️ Third-party extractor (MinerU, Docling, Mathpix, Adobe) — run a separate extractor on your PDFs to produce
.mdfiles, then ingest them as regular Markdown notes via the plugin's standard pipeline. Most reliable for scientific papers, scanned documents, math-heavy PDFs.
📖 Full setup walkthroughs for all three paths (cloud providers, oMLX hardware tiers, MinerU installation, cache housekeeping) → docs/PDF-OCR-GUIDE.md
💬 Query & maintenance
- 🧭 5-stage PPR cascade — see How retrieval works. Personalized PageRank over
[[wiki-link]]gives graph-aware multi-hop context. - 🪟 Right-docked side panel — Query Wiki opens in a Copilot-style right sidebar leaf (v1.22.1+) instead of a centered modal.
- 🔍 Lint health scan — single command catches: duplicates, dead links, empty pages, orphans, missing aliases, contradictions.
- ⚡ Smart Fix All — one-click causal-order repair: fill aliases → merge duplicates → fix dead links → link orphans → expand empty pages, with per-phase report.
- 📊 Operation history panel — searchable, filterable UI for past ingestions, lint reports, and maintenance runs.
- 🛡️ Pre-ingest gate — empty / whitespace / frontmatter-only notes are rejected before any LLM call; content-hash dedup catches identical files across paths.
🔒 Privacy
- 🚫 No backend, no tracking, no analytics. Runs entirely inside Obsidian. Network is used only to communicate with the LLM provider you configure.
- 📁 Source files are read-only. The plugin never modifies your original vault notes — only creates new pages under
wiki/. - 🦙 Full local mode. Ollama, LM Studio, or any local OpenAI-compatible endpoint → your notes never leave your machine.
- 🔐 Minimal permissions. Vault file access for wiki management. Clipboard access only when you click the "Copy" button in the Query modal.
🦙 Local-first
- 🖥️ Ollama, LM Studio, OpenRouter, custom endpoint — out-of-the-box. Local models work for query (smaller context windows); ingest on a 2,000-page vault usually needs a long-context cloud model.
- 📄 PDF OCR path is fully local on Apple Silicon — see PDF OCR Paths below.
- 🔐 ChatGPT Plan (Codex OAuth) — desktop loopback callback on
127.0.0.1:1455; mobile via device-code. Credentials live only in Obsidian SecretStorage; sign-out clears them. Third-party Codex compatibility, not an OpenAI partnership.
🌐 Language
- 🌍 11 UI languages — English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, 한국어, Deutsch, Français, Español, Português, Italiano, Русский. UI and wiki-output language are independent — your wiki can be Chinese while the interface is English.
- 📚 11 wiki-output languages — same set; pick in Settings → Wiki Configuration. Custom input option for ad-hoc prompts.
- 🈶 269+ translated UI strings — every label, modal, and notice. Adding a 12th language is contributor-driven (PR #159 pattern).
🌐 Ecosystem
The plugin composes with the rest of your Obsidian stack — each tool below plugs into the [[wiki-link]] graph without code changes.
- 📄 MinerU online conversion — official free PDF/Word/PPT/Excel/HTML/image → Markdown converter from Shanghai AI Lab's OpenDataLab team. Upload a document, download the
.md, drop it in your vault outside the wiki folder, run Ingest single source. Best path for scientific papers, scanned documents, and complex multi-modal PDFs that need accurate formula/table extraction. Privacy-sensitive users can self-host MinerU; future versions may integrate MinerU natively — see #376. - 🕸️ Obsidian Graph View — open the native graph on any wiki page; every
[[wiki-link]]becomes a node, every back-link an edge. Built in, zero extra bundle size. - ✂️ Obsidian Web Clipper — official browser extension. Save web pages (articles, blog posts, Reddit threads, Hacker News, recipes, research papers, YouTube transcripts via Interpreter) into any folder of your vault, then run the plugin's
Ingest from foldercommand to batch-extract entities and concepts. - 📊 Dataview — query the wiki like a database with DQL (
LIST FROM "wiki/entities" WHERE contains(tags, "person")) or JS API. The plugin writes standard frontmatter (tags:,type:,aliases:) on every page, so Dataview queries work out of the box. - 🌿 Git — version your vault (any Git client). The plugin never rewrites your source files; only creates new pages under
wiki/, sogit diffcleanly separates your edits from LLM-generated content. - 🎞️ Marp Slides — turn any Obsidian note into slide decks via Marp frontmatter (
marp: true). Wiki pages are pure Markdown, so they render as slides without extra conversion. - 🖼️ Canvas — Obsidian's native infinite canvas. Drag wiki cards onto a Canvas to assemble study guides, mind maps, or research overviews from
[[wiki-links]]without leaving the vault. - 🎤 Obsidian Nous — companion plugin for local voice memo and meeting capture (whisper.cpp on macOS; audio never leaves the machine). Generates speaker-labeled transcripts and its own wiki hub pages. Independent of this plugin — both can share the same vault without coupling.
🧰 Headless CLI
Same ingest pipeline as the plugin, but running under plain Node. Use it when Obsidian isn't around — CI, batch jobs, scripted runs.
Run it
The CLI ships in this repo at tools/llm-wiki-cli/. After pnpm install, it shows up as the llm-wiki bin:
WIKI_API_KEY=... pnpm llm-wiki ingest \
--vault /path/to/your/vault \
--source "notes/foo.md" \
--dry-run
That's it. --dry-run keeps every page in memory so nothing is written; drop it to do the real write.
Configuration: where do my settings come from?
The CLI doesn't have its own settings — it reads the same <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/karpathywiki/data.json that Obsidian writes. Before using the CLI:
-
Configure the provider in Obsidian once. Settings → LLM Wiki → pick a provider, paste the API key, click Test Connection, save. The CLI will read whatever you saved there.
-
Pass the API key via
WIKI_API_KEY. v1.25.3 moved keys into Obsidian's SecretStorage (the OS keychain), which Node can't read. So the CLI takes the key from the environment, and a missing key is a hard error — it'll print the right command for your OS:# macOS — pull from the keychain WIKI_API_KEY=$(security find-generic-password -s "obsidian-lw-plugin-karpathywiki" -w) \ pnpm llm-wiki ingest --vault /path/to/vault --source "notes/foo.md" # Linux (libsecret) WIKI_API_KEY=$(secret-tool lookup service obsidian-lw-plugin-karpathywiki) \ pnpm llm-wiki ingest --vault /path/to/vault --source "notes/foo.md" # Windows # Credential Manager → Windows Credentials → "obsidian-lw-plugin-karpathywiki" → Show $env:WIKI_API_KEY = "sk-..." pnpm llm-wiki ingest --vault C:\path\to\vault --source "notes\foo.md"For keyless local endpoints (Ollama, LM Studio) any placeholder works (
WIKI_API_KEY=unused). The key is never logged, never written to a file. -
Node 24+ required. Matches the plugin's
.nvmrc;crypto.subtleandfetchare native.obsidian-llm-wiki/node_modulesmust be installed.
Flags
The flag set is small. The big ones:
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
--vault |
Vault root. Required. |
--source |
Source file relative to the vault. Required. One source per run — for batches, loop over it. |
--dry-run |
Run the full pipeline, keep every write in memory. Drop it to write for real. |
--force |
Re-ingest even if the duplicate-content gate says it's a duplicate. |
--extract-only |
Stop after extraction. Implies --dry-run — you can't accidentally write from this flag. |
--model |
Override the model from data.json. Useful for A/B comparisons. |
--temperature / --top-p |
Sampling overrides. Pass them together: a preset is the pair. |
--seed |
Best-effort seed. Honoured by Chat Completions; some local servers accept it and ignore it (LM Studio does this — --temperature 0 is the only true reproducibility knob there). |
--thinking-mode |
data-json / plugin-off / server-default. |
--granularity |
fine / standard / coarse / minimal / custom. Drives batch size + item limit + round ceiling together. |
--batch-size / --round-base |
Lower-level knobs. Under --granularity custom the per-type caps may overwrite them. |
--max-tokens-per-call |
Cap max_tokens per call. 0 removes the cap (extraction's minimum is still 16000). |
--max-rounds |
Deprecated; throws. Use --round-base. |
Full flag table + shim caveats + what isn't reproduced (SecretStorage, streaming, vault events, metadataCache.links/.headings): see tools/llm-wiki-cli/README.md.
Output
Engine console.debug goes to stdout. console.warn/console.error go to stderr. Toasts render as [Notice] …, progress as [progress] …, completed writes as [write] …. The run ends with a summary: extraction rounds, total LLM calls, entities, concepts, pages created and updated, input + output tokens, elapsed time.
What's in the bundle
The CLI imports the production WikiEngine, SourceAnalyzer, PageFactory, SchemaManager, and LLM clients straight from ../../src/. The only thing replaced is the host (obsidian, the live vault, the metadataCache) — esbuild bundles tools/llm-wiki-cli/src/main.ts for Node and rewrites every from 'obsidian' to tools/llm-wiki-cli/src/obsidian.ts. One shared module means one shared TFile class, which is what makes the engine's instanceof TFile checks work.
Future: standalone repo
The CLI is moving out of this repo into a standalone sibling at green-dalii/obsidian-llm-wiki-cli. Why: the Obsidian marketplace review bot lints the whole repo .ts tree, not just src/, and flags ~60 structural Warnings on any Node CLI living alongside an Obsidian plugin (static node: imports, console.log output, globalThis shim — all unfixable without breaking what the CLI is).
The migration has four phases — Boot → Coexist → Deprecate → Demote — outlined in obsidian-llm-wiki-cli/SPEC.md. The short version:
- Today (v1.26.x PATCH window): sibling repo boots;
pnpm llm-wikihere is still the only user-facing CLI. - v1.27.0: npm package
karpathywiki-clipublishes; both CLIs work, but the npm one is the recommended path. - v1.28.0: in-tree CLI announces EOL.
- After Demote:
tools/llm-wiki-cli/becomes a dev-only test harness referencing../../src/, not a user install target.
The sibling repo is at v0.1.0-dev, not yet on npm as of 2026-08-13. Until v1.27.0's Coexist phase, pnpm llm-wiki here is the canonical CLI — please use it for now. If you only ever clicked the ribbon icon in Obsidian, none of this matters to you; the plugin still ships and updates through Community Plugins as before.
Reference
- 📘
tools/llm-wiki-cli/README.md— flag reference, environment, shim caveats - 📘 github.com/green-dalii/obsidian-llm-wiki-cli — sibling repo (v0.1.0-dev, not yet on npm)
- 🏛️
obsidian-llm-wiki-cli/SPEC.md— why the split, 4-phase rollout - 🗺️
obsidian-llm-wiki-cli/ROADMAP.md— phase tracking
💡 Until v1.27.0 ships, use
pnpm llm-wikifrom this repo. The sibling repo is parallel development, not a published install.
🔍 How retrieval works
Most "AI search" plugins fragment your notes into chunks and embed them in a vector DB. We don't. Karpathy's argument against RAG is that chunking breaks the LLM's ability to reason across your whole knowledge graph — and that argument holds up in practice. Instead, we walk the graph you already maintain by writing [[wiki-links]].
The 5-stage seed-selection cascade
When you ask "Who founded Microsoft?", Query Wiki runs five stages before any answer generation:
- Lex fast path — straight token-overlap against every entity/concept title and aliases. Free, instant, and the gating step for everything that follows.
- LLM keyword generation — the LLM proposes 8–12 cross-language keywords from your query (handles synonyms, abbreviations, and token-overlap-resistant terms in one LLM call).
- Local substring scan — every generated keyword is re-matched locally against page titles, aliases, and body snippets. No extra LLM call; rounds out noise-tolerant recall.
- LLM KB fallback — when lex + keyword scan returns weak signals, the LLM re-seeds the top-N candidates against the full wiki for one semantic pass.
- PPR graph expansion — Personalized PageRank (Haveliwala 2002) over the
[[wiki-link]]graph starting from the candidate seed set. This is what gives graph-aware multi-hop context: "Bill Gates" → "Microsoft" → "competitors", not just literal title overlap.
The cascade truncates at whichever step returned enough signal — no fixed 5-step cost, no LLM calls when lex is sufficient, no lost precision when LLM augmentation is needed.
Personalized PageRank at scale
We use Monte Carlo PPR (Fogaras 2005) — 3,000 random walks × 50 steps each — with the dead-end rule from Haveliwala 2002. Cost is O(K × L) independent of the number of pages, so a 2,000-page vault sees the same expansion latency as a 200-page one.
PPR @5 = 27.1% vs pure-kNN baseline 24.1% on the project's own benchmark corpus (the only published retrieval benchmark in this open-source LLM-Wiki space).
Why no embeddings
We deliberately rejected the embedding path in Issue #175. The graph signal is already there — every [[wiki-link]] is a hand-curated "these are related" edge, and most providers we support (Ollama, LM Studio, Anthropic, Bedrock, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax) don't ship a /v1/embeddings endpoint at all. Adding an embedding model would mean a per-page download, a per-provider adapter, and zero benefit on retrieval quality.
🤖 Models
Supported providers (12+, all from models.dev cross-check 2026-07):
| Provider | Series | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | Claude 5 series | Native PDF; /v1/messages protocol |
| OpenAI | GPT-5.6 series (Sol / Terra / Luna) | Native PDF; Platform API key |
| Google Gemini | Gemini 3.6 series | Native PDF (file parts since 1.5); OpenAI-compatible endpoint |
| DeepSeek | DeepSeek V4 series | OpenAI-compatible; lowest cost tier |
| Alibaba Qwen | Qwen3.7/3.8 series | OpenAI-compatible (DashScope) |
| xAI Grok | Grok 4 series | OpenAI-compatible; long context |
| Moonshot Kimi | Kimi K3 series | OpenAI-compatible; 2.8T MoE frontier |
| Zhipu GLM | GLM-5 series | OpenAI-compatible; strong bilingual |
| MiniMax | MiniMax M3 series | OpenAI-compatible; 1M context |
| Step (阶跃星辰) | Step 3 series (Flash) | OpenAI-compatible; fast inference |
| Tencent Hunyuan | Hy3 series | OpenAI-compatible; open-weight MoE |
| Xiaomi MiMo | MiMo V2.5 series | MIT open-source; flat pricing |
| Google Gemma | Gemma 4 series | Open-weight; 262K context |
| AWS Bedrock | Anthropic + OpenAI variants | VPC / compliance path |
| ChatGPT Plan (Codex OAuth) | Codex Responses API | Browser/device-code sign-in; SecretStorage |
| Local: Ollama, LM Studio, OpenRouter, Anthropic-Compatible | Any OpenAI-/Anthropic-protocol model | Custom OpenAI-Compatible + Anthropic-Compatible (Token Plan / Coding Plan) |
This plugin feeds the LLM your full Wiki context per query — so long-context models win. The full tiered table (cloud + local) lives in docs/MODEL-GUIDE.md, cross-checked against models.dev so the picks stay current.
What matters
- 🧠 Context window ≥ 200K tokens for vaults over ~500 pages. Below 200K the cascade's assembled context starts getting truncated.
- ⚖️ Instruction-following quality matters more than raw IQ for the extraction task — pick a model that follows the schema template, not the biggest leaderboard number.
- 🔌 Embedding endpoint is irrelevant — we don't use embeddings. A provider that lacks
/v1/embeddingsis fine (most of our 12+ providers do). - 🦙 Local works for query, cloud for ingest — ingest on a 2,000-page vault usually needs a long-context cloud model; a 262K local model covers most queries.
Anthropic vs OpenAI vs Codex OAuth — they are distinct providers
- Anthropic (and its Bedrock variant) — separately billed Anthropic Platform API key.
- OpenAI — separately billed OpenAI Platform API key.
- ChatGPT Plan (Codex OAuth) — experimental, distinct provider that uses eligible Codex allowance after browser or device-code sign-in; availability follows OpenAI Codex authentication and allowance policies, not plan name. Third-party Codex compatibility, not an OpenAI partnership or a general ChatGPT API.
📖 Full pick table (cloud + local + PDF OCR + Codex OAuth + quantization + hardware tiers) → docs/MODEL-GUIDE.md
❓ FAQ
What does the plugin actually do?
Pick any note, folder, or selection; the LLM extracts entities and concepts and generates an interlinked wiki with [[bidirectional links]]. Ask questions and get conversational answers grounded in your notes, not the internet. Your original vault notes are never modified.
How do I get started?
Install from Obsidian Community Plugins → pick a provider → Test Connection → run Ingest single source on any note. First wiki pages appear within seconds. See Quick Start.
Is my existing wiki safe?
✅ Backward compatible since v1.0.0. Set reviewed: true on any page to protect it from overwrite. Upgrading from v1.24.x doesn't rewrite your vault; v1.25.0's PDF ingest is cache-only by default.
Is my data sent anywhere?
🚫 No backend, no analytics — the plugin runs entirely inside Obsidian. Only text you explicitly send for ingest/query leaves your device, and only to the LLM provider you configure. For complete data locality, use Ollama or LM Studio.
Can I use the plugin in my language?
🌍 11 languages for both UI and wiki output. UI and wiki language are independent. Adding a 12th language is contributor-driven (PR #159 pattern).
How is this different from a RAG chatbot?
🚫 No chunking. 🚫 No embeddings. 🚫 No vector DB. ✅ Personalized PageRank over your existing [[wiki-link]] graph — graph-aware multi-hop context, zero embedding cost, full local-model support.
Which LLM should I use?
Long-context models (≥200K tokens) work best. The Models section covers the principles; the full tiered table is in docs/MODEL-GUIDE.md.
Is there a published benchmark?
Yes — PPR @5 = 27.1% vs pure-kNN baseline 24.1% on the project's own corpus. The full pipeline and benchmark script are described in How retrieval works.
How do I control API costs?
Use Coarse or Minimal extraction granularity for batch ingest. Smart Batch Skip auto-detects already-ingested files. Auto-Maintenance is OFF by default. Lint shows counts before running fixes — nothing is charged without your approval.
How do I cancel a running operation?
Click the status bar (shows "Ingesting… click to cancel") or Cmd+P/Ctrl+P → "Cancel current ingestion". Stops cleanly at the next batch boundary.
Where do I get help?
GitHub Issues for bug reports · GitHub Discussions for questions and feature requests · Developer Console (Ctrl+Shift+I / Cmd+Option+I) for plugin logs.
🔒 Privacy
This plugin is listed on the Obsidian Community Plugin Market and undergoes automated review for security and permissions.
- 🚫 No backend, no server, no data collection. Pure local software running inside Obsidian. The plugin cannot and does not collect, store, or transmit your data to any server — because no such server exists.
- 🔐 Network access is opt-in. Used only to communicate with the LLM provider you configure. You choose the provider, you enter the API key, you decide where your data goes.
- 📁 Vault file access is used for wiki management (reading notes, generating pages, scanning dead links, detecting duplicates). The plugin never modifies your source files.
- 📋 Clipboard access is used exclusively by the "Copy" button in the Query modal — and only when you click it.
For complete data locality, use Ollama or LM Studio. With a local provider, your data never leaves your machine.
💖 Support
If LLM-Wiki has become a meaningful part of your knowledge workflow:
- ☕ Buy me a Ko-fi — one-time or monthly
- 💳 Tip via PayPal — one-time tip
Sponsorship is entirely optional. The plugin stays Apache-2.0-licensed and feature-complete regardless.
Thanks to the following for supporting the project:
@jameses-cyber, @issaqua, Dikson Choi
🔭 Other projects
Other things I build and maintain:
- obsidian-llm-wiki-cli — the headless ingest CLI, moving out of this repo into its own so the Obsidian marketplace bot stops flagging Node-CLI structure. Runs the same
WikiEngineagainst a vault on disk, no renderer. Still v0.1 in development and not on npm; usepnpm llm-wikifrom this repo until v1.27.0. - pi-shift-router — a task-level router for pi-coding-agent. Before each turn a small LLM judge marks your message routine or consequential, and the tier it picks drives the whole turn. Complex tasks go further: the Smart tier runs as a CTO that plans the work, delegates implementation to Fast subagents, reviews each result and iterates. Upgrades are instant, downgrades wait for a sustained trend; per-tier fallback chains ride out 429s and 5xx. Zero runtime deps, MIT. → shiftrouter.greenerai.top
📜 License & Credits
Apache License, Version 2.0 — see LICENSE and NOTICE.
Built on:
- 💡 Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki — the original concept
- 🛠️ Obsidian Plugin API
- 🔌 Vercel AI SDK v6 (
@ai-sdk/openai,@ai-sdk/anthropic,@ai-sdk/openai-compatible) via ObsidianrequestUrl - 🧮 Personalized PageRank (Haveliwala 2002) and Monte Carlo PPR (Fogaras 2005) — retrieval algorithms
Maintainer: @green-dalii