Index and Log¶
Summary¶
Two special files that help the LLM (and humans) navigate the wiki as it grows: index.md is a content-oriented catalog of all pages, while log.md is a chronological record of all operations performed.
Index.md — Content Catalog¶
Organized by category (concepts, entities, sources, insights), each entry includes: - Link to the page - One-line summary of what it covers - Metadata: source count, last updated date, tags
Purpose: When answering a query, the LLM reads the index first to find relevant pages, then drills into them. This works surprisingly well at moderate scale (~100 sources, ~hundreds of pages) and avoids the need for embedding-based RAG infrastructure.
Karpathy noted: "I thought I had to reach for fancy RAG, but the LLM has been pretty good about automaintaining index files."
Log.md — Chronological Record¶
Append-only, newest entries at the bottom. Each entry starts with a consistent prefix for parsability:
```
[YYYY-MM-DD] ingest | Source Title¶
- Type: article | paper | data | podcast
- Pages touched: [[Page A]], [[Page B]], ...
- Key insight: one-line summary ```
Purpose: Gives a timeline of the wiki's evolution. Helps the LLM understand what's been done recently. Parseable with simple unix tools — grep "^## \[" log.md | tail -5 gives the last 5 entries.
Two Different Purposes¶
| index.md | log.md | |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | Content-oriented | Chronological |
| Question it answers | "What pages exist on topic X?" | "What happened recently?" |
| Structure | Categorized table | Timestamped entries |
| Update pattern | Regenerated on every ingest | Append-only, never modified |