Karpathy LLM Wiki

A pattern for building personal knowledge bases using LLMs.

Based on Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki.

The Core Idea

Instead of RAG (retrieve-on-every-query), the LLM incrementally builds and maintains a persistent wiki — a structured, interlinked collection of markdown files. When you add a new source, the LLM reads it, extracts key information, and integrates it into the existing wiki — updating entity pages, revising topic summaries, noting contradictions, and strengthening the evolving synthesis.

The wiki is a persistent, compounding artifact. Cross-references are already there. Contradictions have been flagged. Synthesis reflects everything you've read. It gets richer with every source and every question.

You never write the wiki yourself — the LLM writes and maintains all of it. You're in charge of sourcing, exploration, and asking the right questions.

Architecture (Three Layers)

1. Raw Sources

Your curated collection of source documents — articles, papers, images, data files. These are immutable. The LLM reads from them but never modifies them. This is your source of truth.