Cross Linker

Cross-Linker — Automated Wiki Cross-Referencing

You are weaving the wiki's knowledge graph tighter by finding and inserting missing [[wikilinks]] between pages that should reference each other but currently don't.

Follow the Retrieval Primitives table in llm-wiki/SKILL.md. Build the registry in Step 1 by grepping frontmatter only (not full pages). Reserve full Read for the unlinked-mention detection pass, and even there, only read pages whose summaries/titles make them plausible link targets. Blind full-vault reads are what this framework exists to avoid.

Before You Start

Writing profile: Before drafting or rewriting natural-language Markdown, read and apply the Writing Profile Resolution section in llm-wiki/SKILL.md. Framework schema, provenance, safety, and operation-specific requirements take precedence. WRITING.md preferences apply only to newly drafted or rewritten natural-language Markdown; preserve source content and structured records.

1. Resolve config — follow the Config Resolution Protocol in llm-wiki/SKILL.md (inline @name override → walk up CWD for .env → global config → prompt setup). This gives OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH and OBSIDIAN_LINK_FORMAT (default: wikilink).
2. Read index.md to get the full inventory of pages and their one-line descriptions
3. Skim log.md to see what was recently ingested (focus linking effort on new pages)

When inserting links in Step 4, apply the link format from llm-wiki/SKILL.md (Link Format section) using the OBSIDIAN_LINK_FORMAT value. When OBSIDIAN_LINK_FORMAT=markdown, compute the relative .md path from the file being edited to the target page.

Step 1: Build the Page Registry

Glob all .md files in the vault (excluding _archives/, _readouts/, .obsidian/). For each page, extract:

• Filename (without .md) — this is the wikilink target
• Title from frontmatter
• Aliases from frontmatter (if any)
• Tags from frontmatter
• Category from frontmatter or directory inference
• One-line summary — first sentence or title field

Build a lookup table:

page_name → { path, title, aliases, tags, summary }

This is your "vocabulary" — every entry in this table is a valid wikilink target.

Step 2: Scan for Missing Links

For each page in the vault:

1. Read the full content

2. Extract existing wikilinks — find all [[...]] references already present

3. Search for unlinked mentions — check if the page's text contains any of these, without being wrapped in [[...]]:

   • Page filenames (e.g., the word "MyProject" appears but [[projects/my-project/my-project]] is missing)
   • Page titles from frontmatter
   • Aliases from frontmatter
   • Entity names, project names, concept names from the registry

4. Check for semantic connections — pages that share multiple tags or are in the same project directory but don't link to each other

Matching Rules

• Case-insensitive matching for names (e.g., "my-project" matches page MyProject)
• Diacritic-insensitive matching — normalize both the page name and the body text with Unicode NFKD (decompose accented characters to base + combining marks, strip combining marks) before comparing. This ensures body text "Muller" matches page [[entities/müller]] and vice versa.
• Skip self-references — a page shouldn't link to itself
• Skip common words — don't link "the", "and", generic terms. Only match on distinctive names
• Prefer the shortest unambiguous wikilink path — use [[page-name]] not [[full/path/to/page-name]] when the name is unique across the vault
• Don't link inside code blocks or frontmatter
• Don't double-link — if [[foo]] already appears on the page, don't add another

Step 3: Score and Rank Suggestions

Not every possible link is worth adding. Score each candidate using a composite signal, then tag it with a confidence label.

Scoring

Confidence labels

Tag each candidate with a confidence label based on its score:

Only act on EXTRACTED and INFERRED candidates. Include the confidence label in the Cross-Link Report so the user can review INFERRED links before trusting them.

Step 4: Apply Links

Pre-write snapshot — before the first file write, check whether the vault itself is the root of a Git repository. Merely being a subdirectory of a larger repository does not qualify: running git add -A there could capture unrelated files. If the vault is not a standalone Git repository, skip this step silently — no nagging, no suggesting git init.

VAULT_REAL_PATH=$(cd "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" && pwd -P)
VAULT_GIT_ROOT=$(git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || true)
SNAPSHOT_SHA=""

if [ -n "$VAULT_GIT_ROOT" ] && [ "$VAULT_GIT_ROOT" = "$VAULT_REAL_PATH" ]; then
  if git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" diff --quiet \
    && git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" diff --cached --quiet \
    && [ -z "$(git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" ls-files --others --exclude-standard)" ]; then
    SNAPSHOT_SHA=$(git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" rev-parse HEAD)
  else
    if ! git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" add -A; then
      echo "Pre-write snapshot failed; abort the skill without writing any vault files." >&2
      exit 1
    fi
    if ! git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" commit -m "pre-cross-linker snapshot" --quiet; then
      echo "Pre-write snapshot failed; abort the skill without writing any vault files." >&2
      exit 1
    fi
    SNAPSHOT_SHA=$(git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" rev-parse HEAD)
  fi
fi

The clean-repository branch deliberately avoids calling git commit, so "nothing to commit" is not treated as an error. If git add or git commit fails, stop before editing the vault; never continue without the promised snapshot.

If SNAPSHOT_SHA is non-empty and the skill writes files, include the SHA in the final report. To discard the entire run, after confirming there are no later changes worth keeping, the user can run:

git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" reset --hard "$SNAPSHOT_SHA"
git -C "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH" clean -fd

For each page with missing links:

4a: Inline linking (preferred)

Find the first natural mention of the term in the body text and wrap it in wikilinks:

Before:

This project uses knowledge graphs to connect entities.

After:

This project uses [[concepts/knowledge-graphs|knowledge graphs]] to connect entities.

Use the [[path|display text]] format when the wikilink path differs from the display text.

4b: Related section (fallback)

If the term isn't mentioned naturally in the body but the pages are semantically related (shared tags, same project), add a ## Related section at the bottom of the page:

## Related

- [[projects/my-project/my-project]] — Also uses AI agents for research automation
- [[concepts/knowledge-graphs]] — Core technique used in this project

If a ## Related section already exists, append to it. Don't duplicate existing entries.