---
title: "Karpathy wiki: the parts that map"
url: https://mdfy.app/glqi_Xjw
updated: 2026-05-14T18:15:49.480Z
source: "mdfy.app"
---
# Karpathy wiki: the parts that map

> Expansion of demo-karpathy-llm-wiki. That doc is the public summary; this is the internal "where it lines up with us and where it doesn't" working note.

## The Karpathy quote that started this

> "Obsidian is the IDE. The LLM is the programmer. The wiki is the codebase."

He was sketching a personal-knowledge-management shape for the AI era. The premise: AIs are most useful when they have access to a structured corpus of your own thinking; that corpus should be a wiki shape (interconnected pages, not a doc tree).

## What maps directly

- **The user is the author.** Karpathy explicitly says the wiki is *hand-curated*. The AI is the programmer reading it, not the writer.
- **Markdown is the substrate.** Every example he gave is markdown.
- **The "wiki" word.** Both his framing and ours land on it.

## What doesn't map

Three structural differences:

1. **Local file vs URL.** Karpathy's Obsidian example is a vault on disk. mdfy is a URL. The URL shape lets the wiki be addressable from any AI tool simultaneously; the Obsidian shape requires that the AI run on the same machine as the vault (or have access via MCP/file-sharing).
2. **One wiki vs N scopes.** Karpathy frames it as one unified wiki per person. mdfy splits the same surface into Doc / Bundle / Hub — three URL scopes that map onto the per-project AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md / .cursor/rules world AI dev tools already understand.
3. **AI as reader-only vs AI as collaborator.** In the Karpathy frame, the AI reads the wiki to inform answers but doesn't extend it. mdfy treats the AI as a co-author at the boundary — it suggests related docs, flags orphans, builds the concept index. The author still owns the canonical text; the AI does the assistive work around it.

## Where I think Karpathy is right

The deepest claim — that a personal knowledge layer is the missing piece between you and the AI tools you use every day — is exactly right. The disagreement is purely about shape and surface area.

## Where I'm betting differently

Per-project context (bundles) and per-person context (hubs) compose better than a single monolithic wiki. AGENTS.md and .cursor/rules already enforce per-project scopes. Our shape matches; the Obsidian shape doesn't.