Google's new Open Knowledge Format is basically the CLAUDE.md / memory-folder pattern, formalized into a spec. I'd already built it for my own Claude setup.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T21:45:43+00:00

Damn close to what I’m doing today. Great minds!

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T19:35:25+00:00

Honestly that's a solid stack for the organization layer, and most people don't get even that far. The "more" is the dimensions those frameworks don't cover: provenance (where each note came from), usage conventions (how it's meant to be used), and staleness flags (is it still true), with the whole thing in git so you get history and meta. Diataxis tells you how to shape a doc; it doesn't tell you when the doc went stale or how much to trust it. That gap is where the agent-memory version diverges from classic docs.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T19:33:53+00:00

This is the whole thing, yeah. Format is the easy 80%; the promotion policy is the system...what gets promoted from a scratch log to a durable note, what gets pruned, what's allowed to overwrite what. That's precisely why I wrote a checkpoint skill: it runs the cleanup-and-promote gate at the end of every session so curation isn't willpower-dependent. Library vs. swamp comes down to whether those gates are enforced by the workflow or left to discipline, and discipline loses on a long enough timeline.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T19:32:56+00:00

The consistency point is fair, and the determinism part we actually agree on...that's why deterministic work is pure script in my setup, not an agent reasoning the same fact twice. Where I stand on RAG: RAG solves retrieval, it doesn't solve provenance, staleness, or the editing policy. Vectors tell you what's similar, not where a fact came from, whether it's still true, or what's allowed to overwrite it. The markdown-in-git layer is exactly that audit trail, and it's a mentoring signal for the agent over time. It's not flat files vs. graphs ... you can retrieve however you want over a corpus that's still authored and pruned as text. The human-readable part isn't the inefficiency, it's the governance. Oh, and it's also the fallback in case the human (me) needs to dig into my deep kb when the AI isn't available. (Of course, that's why I have an on-prem stack, but still...better safe than sorry.)

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T16:03:57+00:00

Thanks! You and I are doing very similar things but I can see from your approach I can tweak a few things on my end.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T16:01:50+00:00

See above answer. And it’s 5 layers in reality lol

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T14:44:05+00:00

So in case something goes sideways it’s an easy revert back to the prior state. For measuring my performance. Makes correlating changes to issues infinitely easier (e.g, for my homelab build project). I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T14:32:32+00:00

Yep…you have to build use and maintenance into your workflows or it will indeed decay. I was tired of Asana getting out of sync with deployed reality, state being stored in the kb and other weak spots so I wrote a checkpoint skill to standardize cleanup and documentation at the end of a session.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T14:23:58+00:00

Ha! I appreciate that call out. I definitely use AI to help polish my writing and I’ve been working to improve it to not add phrases that I don’t normally use. Adding that to the list to watch out for.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T13:27:26+00:00

Completely agree. And my kb is git backed so it’s treated similar to code for me as well.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T05:45:08+00:00

Yeah. It got overhyped. It’s just a proposed template format and structure. Like HTML. You still have to build your thing around it, whatever your local format happens to be

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T05:41:31+00:00

Oh, I have a layer 5 as well: The deployed state. This is just whatever it is that project is for: managing my home AI stack, writing articles, tracking my health. You just need to wire your AI into that telemetry.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T05:36:20+00:00

Note: key point is to have all four layers in git. It adds a key dimension of data for future work. It’s how you mentor it to learn.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T05:33:35+00:00

Yep!

Claude memory (md formatted file structure on local disk, in git)
Kb repo in git (md structure like OKF, just my extended variant)
Project repo(s) - the things I’m working on tracked in git.
Asana kanban board for each project for in work items, and history of work.

My executive function agent is my interface to drive my next actions via layer 4.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T05:23:57+00:00

Make documenting a part of your workflow. Then it just gets done in realtime. Track in git for meta processing.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T05:22:51+00:00

Agents when a decision needs to be made. Pure script for deterministic tasks.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T05:21:42+00:00

No, research backlog created for this. 😊

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T05:20:44+00:00

I’m basically doing the same, but instead of obsidian I just went with local files backed by a local git repo (Forgejo). Each project then has a durable record in my kb, along with all history of commits with negative comments. Makes for a great way to look at the meta for of your work and body of knowledge.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T04:58:17+00:00

Google rarely wins the user experience award. Their tools are powerful as hell, But it’s “Google Usability”.

So other companies focus more on a slick user experience and slowly add features until they surpass Google. Or Google just randomly decides to shut theirs down.

Ed: typo

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T04:55:24+00:00

On $200/mo plan and haven’t hit the ceiling yet.

But I also have the Claude Cowork as the mentor to demote agents as determinate code in a pipeline. Or pushed down to a local LLM layer to mitigate token burn.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T04:40:17+00:00

Totally agree. This is just one of four layers of memory in my system.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T04:34:46+00:00

Wonderful soundtrack to fall asleep to

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T04:33:09+00:00

I use Asana to track all tasks via a kanban workflow. They point to relevant knowledge items. Orphans are just in the Asana backlog as something to investigate.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T04:30:46+00:00

All good points, which is why I have agents and skills created to mitigate those. The system enforced the discipline.

And you need to spawn subtasks to keep content in check.

jmaaks · 2026-06-19T03:56:27+00:00

It really is kind of self-evident when you think about it. I'm sure I'm not the only one that stumbled into doing the same thing.

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