Latadevin Knowledge Base

A local, persistent knowledge base for coding agents backed by Datalevin — a fast, embedded Datalog database.

Coding agents typically have flat or session-limited memory. This gives you a hierarchical Zettelkasten that any agent can search, browse, and build up over time across sessions. An auto-recall hook (where supported) surfaces relevant knowledge on every prompt without you doing anything.

What it does

• Stores knowledge in a 3-layer hierarchy: abstracts (domains) > summaries (subfields) > notes (atomic facts)
• Auto-recalls relevant entries on every prompt via an agent hook (Claude Code supported; extensible to others)
• Full-text search across topics, content, and tags
• Works from any project — the database lives in ~/.local/share/datalevin-kb, not in your repo
• Survives context compression — knowledge persists across sessions in a real database, not in the context window

Prerequisites

1. Babashka (bb) — Clojure scripting runtime
2. Datalevin (dtlv) v0.10.7 — the database engine, used as a Babashka pod

Verify both are installed:

bb --version    # should show 1.x.x
dtlv --version  # should show 0.10.7

Install

git clone <this-repo> ~/latadevin-kb
cd ~/latadevin-kb
./install.sh

The installer defaults to Claude Code. To install for a specific agent:

./install.sh claude-code   # Claude Code (default)
./install.sh cursor        # Cursor (sessionStart: kb-recall-multi + kb list + kb-* wrappers)
./install.sh <agent>       # Other agents (see integrations/)

The install script will:

1. Check that bb and dtlv are installed
2. Create the database at ~/.local/share/datalevin-kb
3. Install the auto-recall hook into your agent's settings
4. Add bb permissions so the agent can use the KB commands
5. Install global kb-* commands to ~/.local/bin/ (work from any directory)
6. Install /kb-* slash commands for Claude Code (~/.claude/commands/)

After installing, restart your agent (or start a new session) for the hook to take effect.

Usage

From the command line

After install, commands work globally from any directory:

# Browse
kb-tree                           # Full hierarchy view
kb-drill "summary/my-topic"       # Drill into a topic and its children
kb-list                           # Recent entries
kb-tags                           # All tags with counts

# Search
kb-recall "search query"          # Full-text search (phrase; follows links + hierarchy)
kb-recall-multi word1 word2       # Multiple keywords in one run, deduped (Claude auto-recall uses this)
kb-get "arch/my-decision"         # Get specific entry
kb-by-tag "architecture"          # All notes with a tag

# Create
kb-abstract "abstract/my-domain" "Description of this domain."
kb-summary "summary/my-group" "What this group covers." "abstract/my-domain"
kb-store --parent "summary/my-group" "arch/my-note" "The actual content." tag1 tag2  # body <= 250 chars (same for kb-abstract / kb-summary)

# Delete
kb-forget "arch/my-note"          # Must have no children

# Graph links (See also: refs are auto-parsed into :kb/links)
kb-backlinks "arch/my-note"       # What links to this topic?
kb-migrate-links                  # Backfill links from existing See also: refs

From your coding agent

Agents read CLAUDE.md (Claude Code) or AGENTS.md (all others) and treat the KB as their primary memory. You can:

• Ask the agent to store what it learns: "store that in the knowledge base"
• Search explicitly: "check the knowledge base for auth middleware"
• The auto-recall hook automatically searches on every prompt — relevant entries appear as context
• In Claude Code chat, use /kb-tree, /kb-recall, etc. as slash commands

See KNOWLEDGEBASE.md for the complete guide.

Using this KB from any project

Drop the right instruction file into any project root so agents in that project treat this KB as primary:

# Claude Code
ln -s ~/latadevin-kb/CLAUDE.md ./CLAUDE.md

# All other agents (Cursor, Copilot, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, etc.)
cp ~/latadevin-kb/AGENTS.md ./AGENTS.md

The global kb-* commands work from any directory once installed, so no path setup is needed.

How it works

Layer system

Layer	Purpose	Has parent?	Has tags?
abstract	Broad domain anchor (e.g., "my-backend", "payments")	No	No
summary	Subfield grouping under an abstract	Yes (abstract)	No
note	Atomic fact with actual content	Yes (summary)	Yes

Auto-recall hook

Where supported, the install script configures a hook that:

1. Extracts keywords from your prompt
2. Runs a cascading search (abstracts > summaries > notes)
3. Injects matching entries as context that the agent sees

This is passive — it adds ~0-2 seconds per prompt and only injects when there are matches.

Note conventions

Abstract, summary, and note bodies are hard-capped at 250 characters (kb-abstract, kb-summary, kb-store). The script rejects anything longer. Split into more summaries/notes and link with See also: and tags.

Notes use prefixed topic IDs for easy navigation:

Prefix	Meaning	Examples
arch/	Architecture decisions	arch/api-framework
ops/	Deployment, infra, CI	ops/staging-deploy
bug/	Bug root causes & fixes	bug/race-condition
how/	Procedures & recipes	how/run-migrations
ref/	Reference facts	ref/api-endpoints
ctx/	Project context & history	ctx/why-monorepo
tool/	Tool configs & gotchas	tool/docker-compose
pref/	User preferences	pref/code-style

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
DATALEVIN_KB_PATH	~/.local/share/datalevin-kb	Database location
CLAUDE_KB_PATH	—	Legacy alias (still supported)

Path resolution (when unset): existing ~/.claude/datalevin-kb is used before ~/.local/share/datalevin-kb. See Database Location in KNOWLEDGEBASE.md for the full order.

Supported Agents

Agent	Integration	Auto-recall hook
Claude Code	integrations/claude-code/	Yes — UserPromptSubmit runs kb-recall-multi on extracted keywords
Cursor	integrations/cursor/	Partial — sessionStart runs kb-recall-multi on workspace folder keywords plus kb list; per-prompt injection is not supported by Cursor’s beforeSubmitPrompt API yet (see integrations/cursor/README.md)

To add a new agent, see integrations/README.md.

Uninstall

Remove the hook entry from your agent's settings and delete the database:

rm -rf ~/.local/share/datalevin-kb
# or if using legacy path:
rm -rf ~/.claude/datalevin-kb

For Claude Code: remove the UserPromptSubmit hook referencing kb-recall.sh from ~/.claude/settings.json.

For Cursor: remove the sessionStart entry for latadevin-kb-session-start.sh from ~/.cursor/hooks.json and delete ~/.cursor/hooks/latadevin-kb-session-start.sh if desired (see integrations/cursor/README.md).

Also included

This project includes general-purpose Datalevin bb tasks (Datalog store, KV store, full-text search) that work with any Datalevin database. Run bb tasks to see them all, or see guide.md for the full reference.