knowledge-bank

Knowledge Bank Skill

Overview

The knowledge bank is a .knowledge-bank/ directory inside the repo. It stores markdown files organized by category, indexed for fast lookups. It survives between Claude sessions and is committed to git alongside code.

Categories:

• adr/ — Architecture Decision Records (ADR-NNNN-title format)
• learnings/ — Lessons learned, discoveries, gotchas
• decisions/ — Technical decisions (lighter-weight than ADRs)
• context/ — Background info, domain knowledge, system explanations
• sessions/ — Per-session summaries auto-captured at end of session

Index system: Every write updates .knowledge-bank/INDEX.md with a single-line comment entry per record. This allows instant grep-based search across thousands of files without reading them all.

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Step 1: Determine the Operation

Read $ARGUMENTS or the conversation context and classify the request as one of:

• init — User wants to set up the knowledge bank in this repo for the first time
• store — User wants to save a learning, decision, or context note
• adr — User wants to create a formal Architecture Decision Record
• recall — User wants to search or retrieve knowledge
• list — User wants to see recent or category-filtered entries
• session — End-of-session capture (store a summary of this session's key learnings)

Then jump to the matching step below.

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Step 2a: INIT — Initialize the Knowledge Bank

When: User runs /kb-init or says "set up the knowledge bank".

1. Check if .knowledge-bank/ already exists with the Read or Glob tool.

   • If it exists, inform the user and skip to the CLAUDE.md update check (step 2a-4).

2. Create the directory structure using the Bash tool:

   mkdir -p .knowledge-bank/{adr,learnings,decisions,context,sessions}
   

3. Create .knowledge-bank/INDEX.md with this exact content:

   # Knowledge Bank Index
   
   This file is the master index for `.knowledge-bank/`. Each entry is a single-line HTML
   comment in a grep-friendly format. Never edit entries manually — use the kb commands.
   
   Search examples:
   - All ADRs: `grep 'category=adr' .knowledge-bank/INDEX.md`
   - By tag: `grep 'tags=.*auth' .knowledge-bank/INDEX.md`
   - By keyword in title: `grep -i 'title=.*cache' .knowledge-bank/INDEX.md`
   - Recent entries: `tail -20 .knowledge-bank/INDEX.md`
   
   ## Entries