Give your agent a knowledge base it can retrieve from
A knowledge base is only as good as its retrieval. Keep plain markdown, add a short index, and search exact text before reaching for anything deeper.
- 1
- search path
- ~15 min
- to start
- 0
- special databases required
Ch. 01 What it is
A knowledge base is only as good as its retrieval. Keep plain markdown, add a short index, and search exact text before reaching for anything deeper.
Ch. 02 The public path
The ratified public depth, with its setup time and honest trade-off.
Tier 1 · simplest path
Markdown corpus and plain search
Keep reference material in plain markdown, one clear topic per file, with a short index that says what exists and where. Search for exact words, open the matching files, and answer only from passages you can cite.
Ch. 03 The detail
A knowledge base is only as good as its retrieval. Keep plain markdown, add a short index, and search exact text before reaching for anything deeper.
- Category
- Knowledge-ops · File retrieval
- Format
- System
- Level
- advanced
- Provenance
- Upgraded third-party
The problem, stated plainly
A knowledge base is not useful because it stores documents. It is useful when a person or tool can find the relevant passage and show where it came from.
Start with files you can open yourself. Give each file a clear topic, keep a short index at the top of the corpus, and search the text before answering.
Retrieval is a verification problem
An exact text search can return the wrong file or no file at all. Read the matching passage, cite its source, and say when no match was found. Do not fill a gap by guessing.
This public entry stops at markdown and plain search.
The honest version
Plain search is literal. It can miss a relevant passage when the question and the file use different words. That limitation is visible and easy to audit, which makes it a sound starting point while the corpus remains small enough to inspect by hand.
What it takes to stand this public version up.
- 1
Markdown corpus and plain search
Setup ~15 min
- plain markdown
- built-in file search
The honest version. The public path carries a benefit and a cost. Both are stated plainly.
-
Tier 1 · Markdown corpus and plain search
Exact search finds the words you type, not every related idea. If the file uses different language, the search may miss it. Treat no result as no match found, not proof that the knowledge is absent.
Edition June 2026 · Updated June 20, 2026