Suggest edit — Andrej Karpathy

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confidence: high
related:
- wiki/themes/llm-wiki-as-medium.md
sources:
- raw/transcript.md
- https://gist.github.com/karpathy/442a6bf555914893e9891c11519de94f
title: Andrej Karpathy
type: entity
visibility: public
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# Andrej Karpathy

(b. 1986) — AI researcher, formerly at Tesla and OpenAI, now independent. In April 2026 he published a [GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/karpathy/442a6bf555914893e9891c11519de94f) coining the **"LLM wiki"** pattern that this entire wiki structure follows.

## Why he matters here

Karpathy is not named directly in the otter.ai transcript. But Jacob says explicitly:

> "I need to have an LLM wiki for the vision for IdeaFlow in the world that just keeps updating. And I'll put one together tonight. Out of this conversation, we'll keep pushing stuff to it. Okay, on WikiHub, and then it's a great use of LLM wiki."

The phrase "LLM wiki" is Karpathy's coinage. Jacob using it as if it's an established term means **he's already operating inside the Karpathy frame** — which is why this wiki was built to that pattern.

## The Karpathy LLM-wiki pattern (April 2026)

A structured markdown knowledge base **maintained by an LLM**, not just queried by one. Three layers:

1. **Raw sources** (`raw/`) — immutable docs (articles, PDFs, transcripts, images). LLM reads but never modifies.
2. **Wiki** (`wiki/`) — LLM-generated markdown. Summaries, entity pages, concept pages, comparisons. LLM owns this layer entirely.
3. **Schema** (`CLAUDE.md` / `AGENTS.md`) — config telling the LLM how to structure, ingest, format, and cross-reference.

Key mechanics:
- Ingesting one source can update 10-15 wiki pages (**ripple updates**)
- `index.md` = content catalog; `log.md` = append-only activity record
- Pages have frontmatter: title, type (concept / entity / source-summary / comparison), sources, related, confidence
- Slogan: *"The LLM is the programmer; Obsidian is the IDE; the wiki is the codebase."*

## Why WikiHub is the natural host

[WikiHub](https://wikihub.globalbr.ai/) (Jacob's project) calls itself "GitHub for LLM wikis." It exists *because* Karpathy's pattern needed a hosting substrate that:

- Renders `[[wikilinks]]` natively
- Indexes frontmatter
- Backs each wiki with a real git repo
- Has fuzzy + full-text search
- Is API-addressable so future ingestions can be done by an LLM

This wiki is a small living example. The conversation that seeded it is the `raw/`; the synthesis pages are the `wiki/`; [AGENTS.md](../../AGENTS.md) is the schema.

## What Karpathy doesn't get credit for in this conversation

The conversation predates (or is contemporaneous with) Karpathy's gist by days or weeks. Jacob's *use* of the term suggests he's read it; his *project* (capturing the vision in graph form, with ripple-updates across pages) is convergent rather than derivative — Jacob has been talking about [[Sparks of Motivation|sparks-into-graphs]] for years before Karpathy named the pattern.

So the relationship is **convergence** more than influence: Karpathy named a pattern Jacob was already building toward. The naming is useful because it gives the pattern a rallying point and makes WikiHub-as-product legible.

## Related

- [[LLM Wiki as Medium]] — the meta-page on this wiki's structure
- [[IdeaFlow]] — Jacob's product, which preceded the term but exemplifies it