Knowledge graph & ontology

Every fact is a potential node. When an ontology is turned on for an entity, the librarian and ingest passes also emit typed edges between facts. The edges are stored in the llm_wiki_edges table and walked by traverseGraph().

 [person] Alice ──worksFor──▶ [organization] Acme
       │
       └──knows──▶ [person] Bob ──homeLocation──▶ [place] Seattle

There’s no Neo4j or separate graph store: a traversal is one recursive CTE over two SQLite tables.

What an ontology is

An ontology manifest lists the node types and edge types the model may use:

const manifest = {
  node_types: [
    { type: 'person', description: 'An individual.' },
    { type: 'project', description: 'An ongoing initiative.' },
  ],
  edge_types: [
    { type: 'contributes_to', source_type: 'person', target_type: 'project', description: 'Works on a project.' },
  ],
};

The manifest is included in the model’s prompt, and the output is validated against it. A short, curated manifest keeps prompts small and the graph clean. Without one, a model will invent new relationship names on every call.

Don’t want to write your own? Use a published one: schema.org warm-agent (9 types, 28 edges) or software organization (17 types, 40 edges).

Three modes

Mode	Behavior
off (default)	No guidance. Facts are untyped (okf_type: null) and maintenance creates no edges.
strict	The model may only use types in the manifest. An invalid okf_type makes the fact untyped, and invalid edges are dropped.
emergent	Like strict, but the model may propose new types via ontology_updates. These are appended to the manifest.

The mode is resolved per entity, in this order: a persisted DB row, then seedManifests[entityId].mode, then the global ontology.mode, then 'off'.

One-level inheritance

A node type can declare a parent_type, which lets edges defined on the parent also match the child:

{ type: 'design_spec', parent_type: 'creativework', description: 'A technical design document.' }

An edge declared about: creativework → person now also accepts a design_spec source. Inheritance is one level only. Chains, cycles, self-parents, and unknown parents are rejected when the manifest is validated.

Facts without types

Facts that skip the librarian (imported dumps, or data from before you turned on an ontology) have no type and no edges, so traversal can’t reach them. runOntologyBackfill() fixes that.

Next

• Guide: Ontologies: seeding, per-entity modes, React hooks, backfill.
• Guide: GraphRAG: traversal options and prompt formatting.