Core Concepts

MindWiki is built around a few key ideas. Understanding these will help you get the most out of the system.

The Vault

Your vault is a folder of plain markdown files on your computer. MindWiki uses the same format as Obsidian — .md files with YAML frontmatter and [[wikilinks]] for connections. There's nothing proprietary about the format. If MindWiki disappeared tomorrow, you'd still have a perfectly usable folder of notes.

Wikilinks

Wikilinks are how knowledge connects. When you write [[feedback-loops]] in a note, you're creating a link to the page called "feedback-loops." MindWiki's auto-linker adds these automatically by scanning for concept mentions, but you can always add them manually.

Every wikilink creates a backlink on the target page. If your note about morning routines mentions [[feedback-loops]], then the feedback-loops page automatically knows about the connection. This is how your knowledge graph builds itself.

Pages vs. Captures

MindWiki distinguishes between two types of content:

Captures are raw inputs — quick thoughts, shared links, voice memos, email forwards. They land in capture/ and are unprocessed. Think of them as the inbox of your brain.

Pages are processed knowledge — organized, formatted, and filed in the right location. The weekly classifier agent transforms captures into pages, or you can do it manually.

Frontmatter

Every page has YAML frontmatter at the top that describes its metadata:

yaml
---
title: Feedback Loops
type: pattern
domain: [physics, psychology, business]
created: 2026-03-15
updated: 2026-04-06
status: evergreen
---

Frontmatter helps AI agents classify and connect your knowledge. The type field is especially important — it tells the system whether a page is a pattern, concept, project, person, reflection, or reference.

The Knowledge Graph

Every wikilink creates an edge in your knowledge graph — a network of connections between your ideas. Over time, this graph becomes incredibly valuable because it reveals how your thinking connects across domains.

MindWiki's auto-linker makes the graph denser each week by finding mentions that should be wikilinks but aren't. The pattern detector reads the graph to find structural similarities — concepts that play the same role in different domains.

Patterns

Patterns are MindWiki's most distinctive feature. A pattern is a structural dynamic that appears across multiple domains. For example, "feedback loops" might appear in physics (positive feedback in phase transitions), psychology (habit formation loops), and business (growth loops).

The pattern detector AI agent scans your entire vault monthly, looking for these structural isomorphisms. When it finds one, it creates a pattern page that maps the shared structure and links to every domain where it appears.

Read more in What Are Patterns?.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

MCP is the open standard that lets AI assistants connect to external tools and data. MindWiki runs an MCP server that exposes your vault to Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible AI.

This means your AI assistant can:

  • Search your vault for relevant knowledge
  • Read specific pages for context
  • Write new captures or update existing pages
  • Query your knowledge graph

No more copy-pasting context into conversations. Your AI has access to everything you've ever written — and it gets smarter as your vault grows.

Agents

MindWiki runs AI agents on a schedule to maintain and enhance your vault:

  • Classifier: Processes raw captures into organized pages (weekly)
  • Auto-Linker: Finds and creates wikilinks between related concepts (weekly)
  • Pattern Detector: Discovers structural patterns across domains (monthly)
  • Linter: Checks vault health — broken links, orphan pages, missing frontmatter (weekly)

Agents run on Cloudflare Workers, so they operate on your synced vault in the cloud without needing your computer to be on.