Second Brain Query
Query your personal wiki and synthesize answers with citations when you need to recall what you already captured about a topic.
Overview
second-brain-query is a journey-wide agent skill that searches and synthesizes your personal wiki to answer “what do I know about X”—usable whenever a solo builder needs grounded recall before deciding or writing.
Install
npx skills add https://github.com/nicholasspisak/second-brain --skill second-brain-queryWhat is this skill?
- Four-step search strategy: index scan → optional qmd search → read pages and wikilinks → fall back to sources/raw
- Starts from wiki/index.md across Sources, Entities, Concepts, and Synthesis sections
- Optional qmd CLI search when the wiki exceeds ~100 pages
- Answer formats tailored to factual, comparison, and exploratory questions with citations
- Follows [[wikilinks]] to pull related context without reading the entire wiki
- 4-step search strategy
- Optional qmd when wiki grows beyond ~100 pages
Adoption & trust: 1.6k installs on skills.sh; 387 GitHub stars; 3/3 security scanners passed (skills.sh audits).
What problem does it solve?
You have months of notes in a wiki but no fast, cited way to answer questions or see how topics connect without manual hunting.
Who is it for?
Builders who maintain a markdown wiki or second brain and want agent-driven Q&A with citations and wikilink traversal.
Skip if: Teams without a local wiki layout (index.md, categorized pages) or anyone who needs live web search instead of personal knowledge.
When should I use this skill?
User asks about collected knowledge, wants connections between topics, says "what do I know about X", or wants to search their wiki.
What do I get? / Deliverables
You get a question-shaped answer backed by wiki pages and links, with deeper source detail only when summaries are insufficient.
- Cited answer synthesized from relevant wiki pages
- Comparison or factual formatted response matching the question type
Recommended Skills
Journey fit
Useful at every journey phase - explore requirements and options before committing to a direction.
Where it fits
Recall prior competitor and audience notes before committing to a new product angle.
Check what you already documented about constraints and past experiments before expanding MVP scope.
Pull linked architecture and decision pages while writing implementation docs.
Synthesize positioning snippets you captured earlier into launch copy outlines.
Answer “what themes did I cover?” when planning the next content batch from your wiki.
How it compares
Use instead of ad-hoc grep across folders when your knowledge is already curated into a linked wiki.
Common Questions / FAQ
Who is second-brain-query for?
Solo and indie builders who collect research and notes in a structured wiki and want their coding agent to answer from that corpus with citations.
When should I use second-brain-query?
Use it during Idea research when recalling competitor notes, during Build when checking prior decisions in docs, during Launch/Grow when drafting from past synthesis, or anytime you ask “what do I know about X” or want topic connections searched in your wiki.
Is second-brain-query safe to install?
It uses Bash, Read, Write, Edit, Glob, and Grep against your wiki paths; review the Security Audits panel on this page and scope file access to your knowledge base only.
SKILL.md
READMESKILL.md - Second Brain Query
# Second Brain — Query Answer questions by searching and synthesizing knowledge from the wiki. ## Search Strategy ### 1. Start with the index Read `wiki/index.md` to identify relevant pages. Scan all category sections (Sources, Entities, Concepts, Synthesis) for entries related to the question. ### 2. Use qmd for large wikis If `qmd` is installed (check with `command -v qmd`), use it for search: ```bash qmd search "query terms" --path wiki/ ``` This is especially useful when the wiki has grown beyond ~100 pages where scanning the index becomes inefficient. ### 3. Read relevant pages Read the wiki pages identified by the index or search. Follow `[[wikilinks]]` to pull in related context from linked pages. Read enough pages to give a thorough answer, but don't read the entire wiki. ### 4. Check raw sources if needed If the wiki pages don't fully answer the question, check relevant source summaries in `wiki/sources/` for additional detail. Only go to files in `raw/` as a last resort. ## Synthesize the Answer ### Format Match the answer format to the question: - **Factual question** → direct answer with citations - **Comparison** → table or structured comparison - **Exploration** → narrative with linked concepts - **List/catalog** → bulleted list with brief descriptions ### Citations Always cite wiki pages using `[[wikilink]]` syntax. Example: > According to [[Source - Article Title]], the key finding was X. This connects to the broader pattern described in [[Concept Name]], which [[Entity Name]] has also explored. ### Offer to save valuable answers If the answer produces something worth keeping — a comparison, analysis, new connection, or synthesis — offer to save it: > "This comparison might be useful to keep in your wiki. Want me to save it as a synthesis page?" If the user agrees: 1. Create a new page in `wiki/synthesis/` with proper frontmatter 2. Add an entry to `wiki/index.md` under Synthesis 3. Append to `wiki/log.md`: `## [YYYY-MM-DD] query | Question summary` ## Conventions - **Search the wiki first.** Only go to raw sources if the wiki doesn't have the answer. - **Cite your sources.** Every factual claim should link to the wiki page it came from. - **Valuable answers compound.** Encourage saving good analyses back into the wiki. - Use `[[wikilinks]]` for all internal references. Never use raw file paths. ## Related Skills - `/second-brain-ingest` — process new sources into wiki pages - `/second-brain-lint` — health-check the wiki for issues