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Wishes for a personal knowledge base

This is a wish

What I wanted from a specific thing, instead of a value which I want generally.

The requirements I wanted a personal knowledge base (PKB) to satisfy, which together with my values and principles drive the Building my visual PKB decision. Another project would have different ones; see Layer build-knowledge as a values-to-blueprints derivation pipeline for why that makes them their own layer.

The wishes

  • A wiki / knowledge base, not just a pile of files - cross-linked, browsable, searchable.
  • Maximally human- and machine-readable - as much content as possible in plain text I can read, grep, script over, and still open years from now.
  • Visual knowledge management - first-class diagrams that interact nicely with the notes, not bolted on as opaque images.
  • Local-first - I can just point nvim at a folder and work, fully offline, with no service required.
  • ...but not local-required - I can also edit from anywhere through a hosted path (the web) with zero local setup, so contribution never demands a local environment. (See Local-first, but not local-required.)
  • A convenience layer, optionally - a richer editing UX available on top of the plain files for when I want it, without becoming the source of truth or a hard dependency.

What these rest on

The wishes lean on values - Prefer plain-text, tool-agnostic formats and Prefer FOSS software wherever possible - and are resolved into concrete tool choices in the Building my visual PKB decision record.

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