Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
A persistent knowledge base, written and kept up to date by an agent, where each ingested source updates the existing pages, creates links between concepts and flags contradictions, instead of merely being indexed.
Full definition
The pattern is described by Andrej Karpathy in May 2025 under the name "LLM Wiki". Its principle lies in a reversal of timing: knowledge is compiled once, when the source arrives, then maintained — instead of being recomposed at every question.
In the articles on this blog, the term designates all three layers, and not only the files produced: the raw sources, immutable; the Markdown wiki generated by the agent — atomic notes, glossary, standards sheets, syntheses, indexes; and the instructions file that says how to ingest, name, classify and link. A wiki without its layer of instructions isn't an AI Wiki, it is a model output.
The qualifier "AI" bears on maintenance, not on consultation: what is automated is the writing and updating of the pages, not the reading anyone makes of them.
Usage in the field
Used to name the alternative to classic RAG for capitalizing stable domain knowledge, and to designate the business building block you then plug into other work — semantic search, revision by flash cards, context injected into another project.
Synonyms and variants
"LLM Wiki" in the original formulation; "persistent wiki" when the emphasis falls on what subsists between two questions.
Not to be confused with
- RAG — an arrangement that finds on demand the passages in a corpus closest to a question and has them synthesized. It produces an answer and keeps nothing; the AI Wiki produces an artifact that remains.
- Zettelkasten — a method of linked atomic notes serving to mature the thinking of whoever writes them. Same form, opposite function: one interprets, the other restores.
- Active memory — organizational memory that keeps, alongside the facts, what those facts taught. It covers a team's decisions and limits; the AI Wiki carries only domain knowledge, with no position.
- vector database — an index of numerical representations allowing retrieval by proximity of meaning. That is a means of access laid over the wiki, not the wiki itself.
Examples
950 atomic notes drawn from a dozen books, standards and technical articles on industrial maintenance: glossary definitions, standards sheets, notes on processes, certifications and performance indicators.
Ambiguities / debates
The word "wiki" evokes a base written collectively by humans and consulted online; here, nobody writes the pages by hand and consultation most often goes through an agent. The word is kept for what it says about the structure — pages that cite one another — not for what it says about the mode of production.