Migration guide
Migrate an Obsidian Vault to a Source-Backed LLM Wiki
Register an Obsidian vault as a Wenlan source that Wenlan follows in the background and never edits without your OK, and distill the most-reused notes into citation-backed wiki pages that AI agents can query.
01
Register the vault as a source; Obsidian stays the human-owned writing surface, and Wenlan never edits your notes without your OK.
02
Wenlan follows the vault in the background, so there is no manual resync; refresh the distilled pages after editing sessions.
03
Agents query cited, reviewed answers instead of re-reading raw notes every session.
01
Quick answer
Register the vault as a Wenlan Source with `wenlan sources add <vault path>` and keep writing in Obsidian. Wenlan follows the vault in the background, checking about every 30 seconds and picking up new, edited, and deleted notes, so there is no manual resync. Then distill the topics you and your agents re-read most often into maintained Pages with citations. Your notes stay in Obsidian: Wenlan never edits them without your OK and writes a change only when you accept it.
Wenlan is a local-first, open-source (Apache 2.0) LLM wiki built around a lightweight Rust daemon. It connects an Obsidian vault as a Source and follows its Markdown in the background, checking about every 30 seconds for new, edited, and deleted notes. Distilled Pages keep citations, staleness, revisions, and human review, and automatic refresh rejects citation-poor drafts. Notes stay in Obsidian, and Wenlan never edits them without your OK; it writes a change only when you accept it.
02
When this problem appears
An Obsidian vault grows into a personal archive, but AI agents can only use it through direct file access. They re-read raw Markdown every session, mix up old and current notes, and leave no trail of which conclusion came from which note. Copying notes into a second tool fixes nothing: the truth splits in two, and the copy goes stale while the vault keeps evolving.
03
Migrate one topic at a time
Do not import the whole vault on day one. One topic keeps the first loop visible and the first failure small.
- Back up the vault first. A vault is plain Markdown files on disk, so copy the folder or rely on your existing backup before the first import.
- Pick one topic that you and your agents ask about often, such as a project folder or an MOC. A small boundary keeps failures visible.
- Install the runtime for your operating system and run `wenlan status` to confirm the local daemon is healthy.
- Run `wenlan sources add <vault path>` and read the found, ingested, and skipped counts. Markdown content ingests; plugin-specific features like Dataview queries, Canvas boards, and embedded views are treated as plain Markdown text, not re-executed.
- In a Wenlan plugin client, run `/wenlan distill <topic>` and then `/wenlan pages <topic>`. In an MCP-only client, use the equivalent Wenlan tools that client exposes.
- Run `/wenlan lint` and `/wenlan curate` to catch malformed citations, orphan links, and broken embeddings before anyone relies on the Page.
- Optional round trip: symlink `~/.wenlan/pages/` into the vault so distilled Pages are visible where you write. Your edits stay human-owned; machine refreshes become reviewable revisions.
- Verify the loop: ask your agent a question the vault answers, open the citation behind the answer, edit the source note, and confirm the Page is marked stale before trusting it again.
wenlan status
wenlan sources add ~/Documents/obsidian-vault
# in a Wenlan plugin client:
/wenlan distill <topic you re-read often>
/wenlan pages <topic you re-read often>
/wenlan lint
/wenlan curate04
What to check next
Keep Obsidian as the writing surface. Wenlan follows the vault Source in the background and never edits your notes without your OK, so there is no manual resync after heavy editing sessions; give it a moment to pick up your changes. Image-only or scanned attachments need OCR before their text is extractable, and a Page is only as current as its last reviewed refresh.
Move one vault topic, verify the loop
Register the vault as a source, distill one repeated topic, then prove that citations and staleness work before migrating more.
FAQ