中文版 → README.zh-CN.md

A local-first LLM knowledge base. Drop in your notes, PDFs, and emails — pith hydrates each into a dense Markdown entry an LLM can read, then lets you chat with your whole library, retrieved by keyword + link traversal. No embeddings, no vector DB. Everything stays in plain files on your disk.

Drop a note into your Obsidian vault — pith auto-ingests it into an entry the LLM can pull from mid-conversation.

• 🗂️ Plain files, not a black box — every entry is Markdown + YAML frontmatter; Obsidian, VS Code, and Git open them natively.
• 🔍 Retrieval you can reason about — weighted keyword search + link-graph traversal + exact grep. No embedding drift, no vendor lock-in.
• 💬 Chat that writes back — the agent reads your library through file/wiki tools; /digest distills a conversation into a new entry.
• 🤖 Auto-ingest + schedule — watch a folder for new files; run agent tasks on a cron (e.g. a daily digest of yesterday's additions).
• 🔒 Local-first — all data under ~/.pith-wiki/; outbound PII filtering on by default. No cloud, no lock-in.

Design philosophy: data engineering > retrieval algorithms. Don't dump raw docs into a store and hope embeddings pull them back. Use an LLM to hydrate each source into a high-density Markdown entry, then retrieve by keyword + link traversal. Simple, file-based, human-readable.

Input formats: .docx .eml .htm .html .md .pdf .txt. The product is pith; the npm package and repo are historically named pith-wiki.

Install

Desktop app (recommended) — the full experience: chat, inbox, dashboard, link graph, skills, and a scheduled-tasks calendar, all over the same engine and on-disk library. No packaged installer yet, so run it from source:

git clone https://github.com/l-zhi/pith-wiki.git
cd pith-wiki/desktop
npm install
npm run dev      # electron-vite dev (HMR)

CLI (optional — for automation / headless use):

npm install -g pith-wiki
pith-wiki        # launch the REPL

On first launch, onboarding walks you through setup — pick a provider, paste an API key, and point it at a notes folder to watch. Everything lives under ~/.pith-wiki/ (config + wiki data); set PITH_WIKI_HOME for an isolated profile.

Platforms: macOS + Linux are CI-tested (Node 20 / 22); Windows is usable but not yet CI-covered. Dev scripts: npm test / npm run typecheck / npm run build (inside desktop/, or repo root for engine/core). See CONTRIBUTING.md.

What it does

1. Hydrate — compress raw documents (markdown / PDF / DOCX / HTML / email) into Markdown entries roughly 30% of the original size. Strip filler, keep signal. LLMs read these directly.

2. Retrieve — no embeddings, no vector DB. Weighted keyword search (title × 2, tags × 2, summary × 1, content × 0.5) + BFS link traversal, plus exact substring/regex search (wiki_grep) and date-range filters (when an entry was added to the library, or the content's own date). Boring on purpose. Entries are plain Markdown; Obsidian, VS Code, and Git all open them natively.

3. Chat — the agent talks to your library through file + wiki tools (wiki_query fuzzy search, wiki_grep exact search, wiki_get, wiki_read_source, wiki_ingest, read_file / write_file / list_dir, …). Every turn writes a transcript; /digest distills the conversation back into a wiki entry, closing the loop chat → store → retrieve.

4. Auto-ingest — point a watch folder (Obsidian vault, inbox, etc.) at pith in Settings, and changes are auto-enqueued for a background worker to hydrate. Built-in health checks flag orphan links, broken frontmatter, and ID collisions.

5. Schedule (desktop) — set tasks that run an agent prompt on a schedule (once, or cron) — e.g. a daily digest of everything added yesterday. Each fire opens a fresh session you can reopen; ${yyyy-mm-dd -1}-style date placeholders are resolved at run time so "yesterday" is always correct.

Full documentation

License

Apache 2.0 · Copyright (c) 2026 lizhi