Knowledge Islands

Projects / ki

The Knowledge Islands command-line interface.

Installs verified compatible harnesses, activates skills in explicit scopes, and hosts the native repository operations that govern a Knowledge Islands checkout.

Released command-line tool · currently published as v0.4.0 · preview

The problem

What this is for.

Agent capabilities usually arrive as files copied into place, after which nobody can say which version is where or which rules a given repository is actually subject to. ki replaces copying with declaration: it installs verified harnesses, activates capabilities in explicit scopes, and runs exactly the checks a repository declares — so the governance travels with the code rather than with your machine.

Whose problem

Whether it is yours.

You want this if you work across more than one repository with an agent, or with anyone else, and the answer to "what governs this code" needs to be the same on every clone. For a single personal project with no rules to share, it is more machinery than the problem needs.

Capabilities

What it actually does.

  • bootstrap: one command that detects your installed agent runtimes, installs the verified canonical harness, and links the core user skills.
  • skill add and repo skill add: activate a capability for you, or for a repository, in an explicit scope that is never implied.
  • repo educate, audit and conform: explain what the declared skills expect, check it read-only, then apply the repairs.
  • manage doctor, diag, outdated and repair: what is installed, what is behind, what is broken, and what to do about it.
  • Eighty-eight commands across fourteen groups in total, listed in full on this site rather than left to the manual.

State

How finished it is.

Published as v0.4.0 and labelled preview. The command surface is settled enough to build habits on — bootstrap, skill activation and the audit loop have been stable for several releases — and the version number is the honest signal that it is still moving.

Using it

How to start.

Install it from the Homebrew tap or the pinned installer below, then run `ki bootstrap` to install a verified harness and activate the core user skills.

Guides on this site.

  • Install and get started — A first-run walkthrough from installing the CLI to a repository that audits clean, with a check to run and a recovery route at each step.
  • How the command groups divide — What the ki command-line interface is for, how its command groups divide by what they can change, and the three refusals that look like bugs the first time you meet one.
  • Naming, locations and refusals — Where ki sits in a working day, how capabilities are named, where it keeps its files, and what its refusals mean.
  • Every ki command — The complete ki command reference, grouped by operational scope, vendored from the tool's own manual at a pinned release.
  • Capability lifecycle — Why installing a harness and activating a skill are separate steps, the commands for each, and the refusals that protect the boundary between them.
  • Update and upgrade — Which of the two refresh commands you want, what each one verifies before changing anything, and why some installations are deliberately excluded from self-update.
  • Local utility commands — Manage local KI capabilities, documentation locations, and supported machine projections.
  • Operator guides — The six workflows tools-ki documents at release length — what each one settles, what it refuses to do, and when you need it.
  • ChatGPT local-capture format — Prepare the bounded local capture accepted by the KI ChatGPT import adapter.

Prefer Homebrew.

The Knowledge Islands tap packages ki, so Homebrew owns upgrades and removal. Naming the tap in the argument taps it implicitly.

brew install knowledgeislands/tap/ki

Or use the stable installer endpoint.

The URL below is this site's stable machine route. It redirects to the installer published at v0.4.0 in the source repository, which owns the installer's behaviour and any signature or checksum verification it performs.

curl -fsSL https://knowledgeislands.info/install/ki | sh

Boundaries

What it deliberately does not do.

It runs only the operations a repository's declared skills register, from harnesses whose payloads verified. It will not run a repository-local wrapper script, a copied rubric runner, a package alias, or a checkout that happens to be nearby. That is what makes "the audit passed" a precise claim and a narrow one: it says nothing about rules nobody declared. It originates no capability content and no standard.

Authority

What this repository owns.

Canonical implementation of the ki command surface. It installs and governs; it originates neither capability content nor portable standards.

That boundary is deliberate. The ecosystem separates philosophy, engineering discipline, capability semantics, portable standards, and executable behaviour so that none of them can quietly absorb another. The full directory shows where this project sits relative to the rest.

Nearby

The rest of the released set.

  • mgit — Run commands across many Git repositories at once.
  • git-almanac — Inspect one local Git repository's calendars, authors and reports offline.
  • rig — A declarative description manager for a person's working setup.

See every public project, or go straight to the released command-line tools.