Working with Multiple Knowledge Bases

One vault for work, one for personal research, one for a side project — as soon as there is more than one, "which folder am I in?" becomes friction. The KB registry gives knowledge bases names.

knowlery kb add work ~/vaults/work-kb
knowlery kb add personal ~/vaults/personal

knowlery query --kb work "what did we decide about the rollout?"
knowlery stale --kb personal

--kb <name> works on every command that operates on an existing KB, from any directory. --dir keeps working exactly as before — --kb is a convenience on top, and the registry is never required (init doesn't take --kb: initialize first, then register).

The registry

A plain address book at ~/.config/knowlery/registry.json — names and paths, nothing else.

• knowlery kb list shows each KB's live state: ok, uninitialized (folder exists, not a workspace), or missing (moved/deleted — entries are flagged, never auto-removed).
• knowlery kb remove <name> removes the registry entry only; the knowledge base's files are untouched.
• If the registry file is ever corrupted, Knowlery reports it loudly and does not reset it — it's your list of your knowledge bases.

Searching everything at once

knowlery query --kb '*' "where did I write about backpressure?"

Runs the retrieval engine over every registered KB and merges the results by score, each line naming its KB:

  31.42  work: concepts/backpressure.md — Backpressure
   8.91  personal: concepts/flow-control.md — Flow Control

Unreachable or uninitialized KBs are skipped with a note; if nothing answers confidently anywhere, the abstention message lists which KBs were consulted.

Vaults in Obsidian register themselves

A vault set up with the Knowlery plugin registers itself under its knowledge base name (a numeric suffix is added if the name is taken). The settings toggle "Register vault for CLI/agent access" controls this; turning it off removes only the entry the plugin itself created — a name you registered manually is never touched.