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;
• ensures the project has a .git/.

Re-run ok init any time to refresh wiring and skills to the installed CLI version.

Share an OpenKnowledge project with collaborators