Repo Wiki Agent Skill

Generate and maintain a living, citation-backed wiki for any codebase as structured Markdown files compatible with MkDocs.

What This Skill Does

This skill enables agents to:

1. Generate baseline wiki - Create complete documentation from scratch
2. Track changes - Detect code modifications via git diff
3. Update incrementally - Refresh only impacted pages, not entire wiki
4. Add citations - Link every technical claim to specific file paths and line ranges
5. Maintain traceability - Generate clickable permalinks to source code
6. Preserve human edits - Only update managed blocks, leave manual edits intact

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need to:

• Document a new codebase with comprehensive, citation-backed pages
• Keep documentation synchronized with code changes
• Provide trustworthy docs that reviewers can verify against source code
• Create onboarding materials for new engineers
• Generate architectural overviews with source traceability
• Maintain a "living wiki" that updates incrementally after each change

How It Works

This skill is composed of specialized sub-skills that work together:

1. repo-wiki-initialize - Set up wiki structure and baseline
2. repo-wiki-index - Build a searchable code map
3. repo-wiki-generate - Create citation-backed markdown pages
4. repo-wiki-detect - Find changes since last run
5. repo-wiki-update - Incrementally refresh affected pages
6. repo-wiki-validate - Verify citations and quality gates

Quick Start

Generate a New Wiki

# Activate the initialize sub-skill
cat /path/to/skills/repo-wiki-initialize/SKILL.md

# Follow instructions to create baseline wiki

Update Existing Wiki After Code Changes

# Activate the detect changes sub-skill
cat /path/to/skills/repo-wiki-detect/SKILL.md

# Then activate the update sub-skill
cat /path/to/skills/repo-wiki-update/SKILL.md

Validate Wiki Quality

# Activate the validate sub-skill
cat /path/to/skills/repo-wiki-validate/SKILL.md

Workflow Overview

First-Time Wiki Creation

1. Read repo-wiki-initialize/SKILL.md for initialization instructions
2. Read repo-wiki-index/SKILL.md to build code map
3. Read repo-wiki-generate/SKILL.md to generate pages with citations
4. Read repo-wiki-validate/SKILL.md to verify output quality

Incremental Updates (After Code Changes)

1. Read repo-wiki-detect/SKILL.md to identify changes
2. Read repo-wiki-update/SKILL.md to refresh impacted pages
3. Read repo-wiki-validate/SKILL.md to verify changes

Output Structure

The skill generates a MkDocs-compatible documentation tree:

<repo>/
  mkdocs.yml                    # MkDocs configuration
  docs/
    index.md                    # Overview
    getting-started/
      local-dev.md
      configuration.md
    architecture/
      overview.md
      data-flow.md
      dependency-map.md
    components/
      <component-name>.md       # One per major component
    api/
      endpoints.md
    operations/
      build-and-test.md
      deploy.md
    glossary.md
  .repo_wiki/
    state.json                  # Tracks baseline commit & page mappings
    manifest.json               # Citations and source fingerprints
    logs/

Citation Format

Every technical claim includes citations with file paths and line ranges:

Inline Format:

The service starts an HTTP server on the configured port.
Source: `src/server.ts` L12–L48

Footnote Format (Preferred):

The service starts an HTTP server[^1].

[^1]: `src/server.ts` L12–L48 (commit abc1234)

Remote Permalink (When Git Remote Available):

[^1]: [src/server.ts#L12-L48](https://github.com/org/repo/blob/abc1234/src/server.ts#L12-L48)

Key Principles

1. Citation-backed: Every non-trivial technical statement must have a citation
2. Incremental: Only update what changed, minimize diff size
3. Deterministic: Same commit = same output (modulo timestamps)
4. Safe: Exclude secrets, avoid overwriting manual edits
5. Verifiable: Citations must point to valid file:line ranges
6. Reviewable: Small PRs, stable formatting, link-checkable

Reference Materials

For detailed information, see the references/ directory:

• references/CITATION-SPEC.md - Citation format and coverage rules
• references/ARCHITECTURE.md - Skill design and module relationships
• references/STATE-FORMAT.md - State file schema and usage
• references/TEMPLATES.md - Page template specifications

Scripts

Helper scripts are available in scripts/ directory:

• scripts/validate_citations.py - Verify all citations resolve correctly
• scripts/generate_permalinks.py - Convert local citations to remote URLs
• scripts/detect_managed_blocks.py - Find and parse managed block markers
• scripts/compute_page_impact.py - Determine which pages need updates

Assets

Templates and resources in assets/ directory:

• assets/templates/mkdocs.yml.template - MkDocs config template
• assets/templates/component-page.md.template - Component page structure
• assets/templates/overview-page.md.template - Overview page structure
• assets/templates/architecture-page.md.template - Architecture page structure