OpenKnowledge — what it is and how to install it

OpenKnowledge — what it is and how to install it

OpenKnowledge (OK) is a markdown-CRDT collaboration platform. It turns a directory of .md / .mdx files into a live, multi-writer knowledge base: agents and humans edit the same documents in real time, every change is attributed, and a browser preview renders edits as they land.

This skill covers discovery, install, and opening OpenKnowledge files — including single files that are not part of a project (see Opening a file outside a project below). It does not carry the in-project read/write runtime contract (the STOP rules for native file tools, the grounding and linking rules, the MCP routing table) — that ships separately as the project-local skill installed by ok init (see Working inside a project below).

CLI name. Commands below use Stable's ok (open-knowledge). OpenKnowledge Beta's terminal commands are ok-beta (open-knowledge-beta), with ~/.ok-beta/ in place of ~/.ok/.

Install OpenKnowledge on a repository

Run ok init from the repository root:

npx @inkeep/open-knowledge init
# or, after a global install:
npm install -g @inkeep/open-knowledge
ok init

ok init is the one setup verb. It:

• scaffolds a .ok/ directory (project config — content.dir defaults to .);
• wires the OpenKnowledge MCP server into the coding agents it detects on this machine — skip with --no-mcp;
• installs the project-local runtime skill into each detected agent's skills dir (<agent-dir>/skills/open-knowledge/) so agents working in this repo get the full read/write contract. OK only writes into agent directories that already exist — it never creates one, so nothing appears for agents you don't use, and ok init says so when it finds none;