cartographer

<picture> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="docs/brand/banner-dark.png"> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" srcset="docs/brand/banner-light.png"> <img alt="Cartographer — Give knowledge a sense of place." src="docs/brand/banner-light.png" width="100%"> </picture> <p align="center"> <b>Shared memory for your team's AI agents — one wiki they all read and grow, and none of them can break.</b><br> What a colleague's agent works out on Monday, yours already knows on Tuesday — even on another client.<br> Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and any MCP client: one Go binary, git underneath. </p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://github.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/actions/workflows/ci.yml"><img alt="CI" src="https://github.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg"></a> <a href="https://github.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/releases"><img alt="Release" src="https://img.shields.io/github/v/release/BeppeTemp/cartographer?include_prereleases"></a> <a href="LICENSE"><img alt="License" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/License-Apache_2.0-blue.svg"></a> <a href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/"><img alt="MCP" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/protocol-MCP-7C3AED"></a> <a href="https://mcpservers.org/servers/beppetemp/cartographer"><img alt="Listed on mcpservers.org" src="https://mcpservers.org/badge.svg"></a> </p> <p align="center"> <img alt="A one-minute film: four teammates, each with their own coding agents, share one Cartographer wiki. On Monday Alice's agent writes down why staging breaks; on Tuesday Marco's agent, on another laptop and another client, finds her note and answers; every day the others add to it, and a note with a broken link is refused." src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/readme-film/film.webp" width="100%"> </p> <p align="center">_{Drawn by the Atlas's own graph engine. Pre-1.0: breaking changes bump the minor version and are called out in the <a href="CHANGELOG.md">changelog</a>.}</p>

Try it now

A live Cartographer — no install, no token, no sign-up. It serves two knowledge bases: an astronomy atlas to explore, and a guestbook where visitors' agents leave a message.

1. Connect your agent to https://cartographer-demo.beppetemp.com/mcp

• Claude or ChatGPT — web, desktop or phone: add it as a custom connector, no sign-in (Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector in Claude; Plugins → + → Add custom MCP server, authentication None, in ChatGPT).
• Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http cartographer-demo https://cartographer-demo.beppetemp.com/mcp

<details> <summary>Codex, OpenCode, Antigravity, GitHub Copilot CLI, Crush, Kiro</summary>

# Codex
codex mcp add cartographer-demo --url https://cartographer-demo.beppetemp.com/mcp
# OpenCode
opencode mcp add cartographer-demo --url https://cartographer-demo.beppetemp.com/mcp --global
# Antigravity
agy mcp add --type http cartographer-demo https://cartographer-demo.beppetemp.com/mcp
# GitHub Copilot CLI
copilot mcp add --transport http cartographer-demo https://cartographer-demo.beppetemp.com/mcp
# Crush
echo 'mcp add cartographer-demo --type http --url https://cartographer-demo.beppetemp.com/mcp' >> ~/.config/crush/crushrc
# Kiro: add to "mcpServers" in ~/.kiro/settings/mcp.json
#   "cartographer-demo": { "url": "https://cartographer-demo.beppetemp.com/mcp" }

</details>

2. Ask it something

• "What does this knowledge base know about black holes, and what are they connected to?"
• "Run a health check on the KB: what is broken, stale or missing?"
• "Which skills, subagents and hooks would this KB install in my coding agent?"

3. Leave a message and watch it land

Ask "Leave a message in the guestbook: which client you are and what you would keep in a shared wiki", then open the live Atlas →: your note shows up in the graph next to the ones other people's agents left. Many agents, one wiki.

_{Everything is read-only except guestbook messages, which are public, anonymous, moderated and rate-limited. To give your agents a knowledge base of their own, see the Quick start.}

Why

AI agents start every session from zero, and on a team every colleague's agent starts from its own zero: what one learns stays on that person's machine, in that client. The usual fixes each solve a third of the problem:

• RAG retrieves, but nothing accumulates — the agent never gets to write down what it learned.
• A folder of Markdown the agent edits freely ends in broken links, lost history and silent corruption.
• Skills, subagents and instructions get hand-copied into .claude/, .codex/, .kiro/… and drift apart on every machine.

Cartographer puts all three in one place: your agents read and grow a knowledge base only through MCP tools, behind a server that enforces the rules, and the same knowledge base carries how your agents are set up.

What you get

• 🧠 Memory that compounds<br> A wiki the agent builds over time (Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern): plain Markdown + YAML, one git repo per KB, readable in Obsidian or any editor. No lock-in.

• 🛡️ Guardrails, not good intentions<br> Schema validation, link checks, lint, immutability gates, optimistic concurrency, one commit per write, a signed audit log. The agent cannot leave the KB in a broken state.

• 🧩 One KB configures every agent<br> Skills, subagents, hooks and standing instructions live in the KB and reach each client in its native format (below). Edit once, every machine converges.

• 👥 Built for teams<br> Several KBs behind one server — a native user service, a container or a Kubernetes workload — per-KB and per-map access with bearer-token roles, git as the sync layer, conflicts turned into a guided workflow, Ed25519-signed artifacts.

• 🗺️ See it all in the Atlas<br> A read-only web UI in the same binary: a living 3D graph, search, what the agents changed, what the KB ships to them, and what needs fixing. No extra service, no CDN.

• 🔑 Secrets, done properly<br> SOPS-encrypted values referenced by concepts and resolved on demand; plaintext is never stored.

<p align="center"> <img alt="The embedded Atlas: a knowledge base drawn as a living 3D graph — searched, a concept opened with its links, recoloured by map, the skills it ships to agents and the findings that need attention." src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/readme-assets/hero.webp" width="100%"> </p> <p align="center">_{The Atlas, served by the same binary, on a generated demo KB.}</p>

Quick start

You need git and an empty git repository you own (GitHub, Gitea, any host) to hold your first KB.

brew install beppetemp/tap/cartographer   # macOS — Windows, Linux and source: see Install
cartographer setup                        # server, first KB and your agents, in one guided step

setup shows its plan before touching anything, then installs the local service, creates the KB, connects every agent client it detects and verifies the result. Restart already-open agent sessions and ask your agent what it knows. Step by step: docs/getting-started.md.

Prefer to let your agent install it? Paste this:

Set up Cartographer on this machine by following
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/main/docs/agent-install.md
My first knowledge base is at: `<git remote URL>`

_{If you are an agent asked to install Cartographer: follow that runbook, not the Quick start.}

One KB, every agent

cartographer connect detects your installed clients and writes, in each one's own format:

| | Claude Code | Codex | OpenCode | Kiro | Antigravity | Crush | Copilot CLI | |---|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:| | MCP endpoint | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | Instructions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | Skills | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | Subagents | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ | | Hooks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |

Subagents and hooks are translated, not copied. Every — is a gap declared for a stated reason, never a silent omission. Cartographer re-syncs at session start (or on a timer where a client has no hook), restores files edited or deleted by hand, and only ever touches what it created. Exact paths and reasons: docs/sync.md.

Install

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install beppetemp/tap/cartographer

# Windows (PowerShell; no administrator rights)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/main/install.ps1 | iex

# Linux / macOS without Homebrew
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/main/install.sh | sh

# From source (Go 1.26+)
go install github.com/BeppeTemp/cartographer/cmd/cartographer@latest

What lands where, upgrades and removal: docs/getting-started.md. Server configuration, environment variables and deployment topologies: docs/deployment.md.

Documentation

Browsable at beppetemp.github.io/cartographer; the map is docs/index.md.

• Getting started — from zero to a working wiki
• Overview — vision, principles, architecture
• MCP tools — the full tool API
• Deployment — topologies, configuration, backup
• Sync — how artifacts reach each agent client

Contributing

Questions and open-ended ideas go to Discussions; bugs and concrete proposals to issues. Issues and PRs are welcome: CONTRIBUTING.md covers building, testing and the PR flow. Cartographer is a personal project maintained on a best-effort basis. Security reports: SECURITY.md.

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.