Abstract Wikipedia Editor

Desktop editor for creating and editing articles on Abstract Wikipedia.

Abstract Wikipedia stores articles as language-neutral function calls (Z-objects) that get rendered into every language automatically. Instead of writing prose, you write function calls like {{Z26570|SUBJECT|Q845945|Q17}} which render to sentences like "Kashima Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Kashima" in any language. This project provides tools for writing those function calls and publishing them.

Project website | Download latest release

🏁 Project status: retired — final release v5.0.0 (2026-06-24)

This project is done. v5.0.0 is the final release. The editor works and is stable, but active development has ended — I have other life priorities that need my time, and there isn't enough user interest in the tool to make continued maintenance tenable. v5.0.0 ships one last fix (the reversed "country of origin" sentence reported on the Project chat for tennis, Q847) and closes out the open requests.

The code remains available and the tooling is in a good state for anyone who wants to fork or pick it up; I just won't be the one maintaining it. The original on-hold blockers below are left for context — they're why a solo maintainer couldn't keep pace:

• Auto-generation depends on community consensus that keeps shifting. Which Wikifunction is "correct" for a given relationship (e.g. Z26095 vs Z26039 for P279, Z26955 → Z28016 migrations, the Z32982 "part of" role) is decided on the Wikifunctions/Abstract Wikipedia talk pages, and those decisions change. Each shift means the property mapping has to be re-checked and re-released, and bugs surface from on-wiki feedback faster than one maintainer can keep up with.
• The paragraph model is contested. The editor emits Z33068 ("paragraph from sentences"), but established contributors report it times out on full paragraphs and prefer inserting a Z35672 separator between standalone sentences instead. There is no settled answer, so the editor's default output may be the wrong shape depending on whose convention wins.
• The project's scope is still being defined. Notability, deletion, and what Abstract Wikipedia is even for are open community discussions (Abstract Wikipedia:Project chat). It is hard to invest in tooling for content workflows while the rules for that content are unsettled.
• Publishing is fragile by design. The MediaWiki API rejects bot-password edits to the article namespace, so all writes go through Playwright browser automation, and VPN use triggers email verification — which is why CI-based publishing stays disabled and every publish is a manual, local, supervised step.

Open follow-up work is tracked in todo.md under "On hold — open items" for any future fork. The tooling is in a good enough state to pick back up whenever the community direction settles — but that won't be me.

How it works

The overall pipeline is:

1. Enter a Wikidata QID (e.g. Q7235 for Sophocles)
2. Auto-generate a wikitext template by fetching the item's properties from Wikidata and mapping each property to a Wikifunctions sentence generator
3. Preview the English rendering with resolved Wikidata labels
4. Publish to Abstract Wikipedia via Playwright browser automation (the API does not support article creation — see DOCUMENTATION.md for why)

Desktop editor

The Electron app is the main way to use this project.

cd editor
npm install
npm run setup    # one-time: installs Python deps + Playwright browsers
npm start

npm run setup is required before the first npm start because publishing to Abstract Wikipedia uses Playwright browser automation. It installs the project's Python dependencies and downloads the Playwright browser binaries under the same Python launcher (py on Windows, python3 elsewhere) the editor invokes at runtime.

Or double-click runeditor.bat on Windows.

Features

• Enter any Wikidata QID and auto-generate a wikitext template from its properties
• Live preview renders English sentences with resolved Wikidata labels
• Pull existing articles from Abstract Wikipedia and edit them
• Overwrite protection on Pull from Wikidata. If the article already exists on Abstract Wikipedia, the first click on "Pull from Wikidata" shows the existing Abstract Wikipedia content instead and displays a warning notice. You have to click "Pull from Wikidata" a second time to actually regenerate from Wikidata and discard what's there. Prevents accidentally nuking hand-edited content.
• Push articles to Abstract Wikipedia via Playwright browser automation
• Built-in login screen for Wikimedia credentials

Why browser automation?

Abstract Wikipedia's API does not support creating or editing articles. The standard action=edit endpoint does not work with the abstractwiki content model. So we automate the visual editor's clipboard-paste workflow via Playwright. See DOCUMENTATION.md for the full technical details.

Wikitext template syntax

Articles are written in a template syntax that maps to Abstract Wikipedia's Z-object JSON:

---
title: Shinto Shrine
variables:
  deity: Q-item
---
{{location|SUBJECT|Q845945|Q17}}
{{spo|$deity|Q1762010|SUBJECT}}

Each {{...}} block becomes one article fragment (one sentence). The syntax supports:

• Z-function IDs (Z26570) or human-readable aliases (location, spo, role) — see data/function_aliases.json for the full alias list
• SUBJECT — the article's Wikidata entity (auto-resolved)
• $lang — the rendering language
• Q-items (Q845945) — automatically wrapped as Wikidata entity references
• Template variables ($deity) — declared in the YAML frontmatter and filled at render time

The parser (wikitext_parser.py) compiles these templates into the nested Z-object clipboard JSON that Abstract Wikipedia's visual editor expects.

Property-to-function mapping

The file data/property_function_mapping.json is the core configuration that drives auto-generation. It maps Wikidata properties to Wikifunctions sentence generators:

Property	Wikifunction	Produces
P31 (instance of)	Z26039	"Nairobi is a city."
P106 (occupation)	Z26039	"Marie Curie is a physicist."
P27 (citizenship)	Z28016	"Marie Curie is a physicist of Poland." (combined with P106 when both exist)
P131/P17/P30 (location)	Z26570	"Kashima Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Kashima."
P36 (capital)	Z28016	"Tokyo is the capital of Japan."
P37 (official language)	Z28016	"Japanese is the official language of Japan."

Deduplication rules prevent redundant sentences:

• Location priority: P131 > P17 > P30 — only the most specific location is used
• Occupation over instance: When P106 (occupation) exists, P31 (instance of) is skipped (avoids "X is a human")
• Occupation + citizenship combined: When both P106 and P27 exist, they merge into one sentence ("X is a [occupation] of [country]") instead of two separate ones
• Capital inverse: P1376 is skipped when P36 exists (they're inverses of each other)

Project structure

Path	Purpose
editor/	Electron desktop app (TypeScript) — the main product
data/property_function_mapping.json	Maps Wikidata properties → Wikifunctions sentence generators
data/function_aliases.json	Human-readable names for Z-function IDs (e.g. location → Z26570)
data/templates/	Hand-crafted wikitext templates (auto-generated ones are gitignored)
discussions/	Snapshots of Abstract Wikipedia discussion pages the bot watches (updated daily + on push by a GitHub Actions workflow)
site/	Project website (deployed via GitHub Pages)
tests/	Unit tests

Python scripts

Script	Purpose
generate_wikitext.py	Fetches a Wikidata item's properties and produces a wikitext template using the property mapping
wikitext_parser.py	Compiles wikitext templates into Z-object clipboard JSON for Abstract Wikipedia
create_from_qid.py	Full pipeline: generate wikitext → compile to JSON → publish via Playwright
edit_from_qid.py	Same as above but for editing existing articles (deletes old fragments, pastes new ones)
convert_article.py	Reverse direction: fetches an existing article from Abstract Wikipedia and converts its Z-objects back to wikitext
convert_to_aliases.py	Rewrites Z-IDs in wikitext files to human-readable aliases (e.g. Z26570 → location)
build_pages.py	Builds the GitHub Pages site from all existing Abstract Wikipedia articles
archive_pages.py	Submits Abstract Wikipedia pages to the Wayback Machine for archiving
fetch_discussions.py	Snapshots a hardcoded list of Abstract Wikipedia discussion pages (project chat, talk pages, etc.) into discussions/ so the bot has offline context. Run automatically on push and daily via GitHub Actions

Configuration

Credentials can be entered through the Login button in the desktop editor, or by creating a .env file in the project root:

WIKI_USERNAME=YourUsername
WIKI_MAIN_PASSWORD=your_password