Knowledge Base

A personal living knowledge base for software development — designed to be used alongside AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, etc.).

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What's in here

Path	Purpose
INDEX.md	Master index of all entries — paste into any AI session
context-base.md	Shared identity/preferences — paste at the start of any AI session
environment/	Dev environment entries: tools, installs, configs
engineering/	Software engineering entries: languages, patterns, frameworks
meta/CONVENTIONS.md	How to write and name KB entries
meta/ASSISTANT.md	How to work with AI assistants using this KB
meta/ORIGIN.md	How this knowledge base came to be
prompts/	Reusable AI prompt templates

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Quick Start on a New Machine

# Clone the repo to your home directory
git clone https://github.com/[YOUR-USERNAME]/knowledge-base "$HOME\knowledge-base"

# Open it in VS Code
code "$HOME\knowledge-base"

Then:

1. Update context-base.md if your role or preferences have changed
2. Create a new ~/HOME.md for this machine (see the template section in meta/ASSISTANT.md)
3. Check INDEX.md to see what knowledge is already available

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Starting an AI Session

For the best results with any AI assistant:

1. Paste context-base.md (shared preferences and identity)
2. Paste ~/HOME.md (this machine's tools and current status)
3. Optionally paste INDEX.md (so the assistant knows what KB entries exist)

See meta/ASSISTANT.md for detailed guidance per assistant type.

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Adding a New Entry

1. Pick the right category folder (environment/ or engineering/)
2. Name the file: kebab-topic-YYMMDDa.md (see meta/CONVENTIONS.md)
3. Use the entry template from meta/CONVENTIONS.md
4. Update INDEX.md with the new entry
5. Commit and push

Shortcut: Use prompts/new-kb-entry.md to have an AI write the entry for you.

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File Naming

kebab-topic-YYMMDDa.md

Example: docker-compose-basics-260501a.md — created May 1, 2026, first entry of the day on this topic.

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Git Workflow

This repo is intentionally simple — no branches, no PRs. Just commit to master as you work.

git add -A
git commit -m "Add entry: topic summary"
git push

What's NOT in this repo:

• ~/HOME.md — machine-specific, lives outside the repo
• *.local.md — any file you want to keep local (gitignored)