past-wiki

A wiki where every page is a question. Point it at any past project, ask in plain language, and read an article written from what the project remembers, with each claim linked to the dated source it came from.

There is no table of contents and no page editor. past holds the knowledge; this app only reads it. Ask something new and a new page exists.

This is a showcase for the past Memory API, kept small on purpose: one server route, one typed client, one screen. Fork it, point it at your own notes, and you have a wiki that answers questions about them.

Run it

You need a project key from your past console (Settings › API keys). A project key reads one project and nothing else, which is exactly the blast radius a public-facing wiki should have. Never use the organization's management key here.

cp .env.example .env.local   # fill in PAST_API_KEY
npm install
npm run seed                 # push the sample notes into the project and wait for them
npm run dev                  # http://localhost:3000

Then ask the wiki something the sample knows: "who is on call?", "why did we move to Hetzner?", "what does a telemetry box cost?".

Variable	Default	What it does
PAST_API_KEY	required	The project key. Stays on the server; the browser never sees it.
PAST_BASE_URL	https://api.past.dev	Your self-hosted URL if you run past yourself.
PAST_IDENTITY	wiki	Who the read answers as. Pages see project-wide knowledge plus this identity's audiences.
WIKI_TITLE	past wiki	The name in the sidebar and the tab.

Put your own notes in

npm run seed -- <folder> walks a folder and pushes every .md, .markdown and .txt file as one data point, then waits until past has processed them.

npm run seed -- ./docs              # your folder
npm run seed -- ./docs --dry-run    # list what would be pushed, push nothing
npm run seed -- ./docs --no-wait    # push and return without waiting

• The id is the path relative to the folder. Run the seed again after editing a file and only that file is reprocessed; past reports the rest as unchanged. Rename a file and it becomes a new note.
• The timestamp is the note's date: front matter line (any ISO date), falling back to the file's modification time. The date is when the note was true; past orders knowledge by it and works out what superseded what, so it is worth setting.
• The label is the title: front matter line, else the first # heading, else the file name.

sample/ holds the notes of Harbor Loop, a fictional eight-person company, dated across the first half of 2026 with a few decisions that change over time. Delete the folder once you have your own.

Seeding from a MediaWiki site

npm run mediawiki -- <site> <folder> exports every article of a MediaWiki site (Wikipedia, Fandom, any wiki with an api.php) into a folder the seed can push. This is how the public copy at wiki.past.dev was filled: the whole One Piece Wiki, 8,000 articles, a subject with more lore than a language model keeps straight.

npm run mediawiki -- https://onepiece.fandom.com ./onepiece            # every article
npm run mediawiki -- https://en.wikipedia.org ./wp --limit 50          # a taste
npm run mediawiki -- https://onepiece.fandom.com ./onepiece --concurrency 1   # gentler on a site that answers 429
npm run seed -- ./onepiece --no-wait

• One article, one note. The file is named after the title, subpages become subfolders, and the front matter carries the title:, the date: of the last revision, the article's source: URL and its revision: id.
• Only the text. Navigation boxes, reference lists, images and links are dropped; past bills by the byte and none of them answer a question. Infoboxes become a list of their fields, tables stay tables.
• Re-run it to catch up. An article whose revision has not moved is skipped, so a second export fetches only what changed, and the seed after it pushes only those files.

The export is for a project of your own: the wiki's text stays under its site's license (CC-BY-SA for Wikipedia and Fandom), so keep the source line and do not commit the folder.

Seeding from GitHub Actions

.github/workflows/seed.yml runs the same script on demand. In your fork, add the repository secret PAST_API_KEY (and the variable PAST_BASE_URL if you self-host), then trigger "seed" from the Actions tab with the folder to push. Commit your notes to the repository and every edit is one workflow run away from the wiki.

How a page is made

browser ──POST /api/ask {question}──▶ Next.js route
                                        │
                                        ├─▶ POST {PAST_BASE_URL}/api/v1/answer
                                        │     article + citations + ranked evidence
                                        │
                                        └─▶ on 503 answerer-not-configured:
                                              POST /api/v1/recall
                                              ranked evidence only

• /answer returns a written answer, the documents it cited, and the full recall page that grounded it. The wiki renders the answer as the article and the page as numbered sources. Citations in the text (d3) become superscript links to source 3.
• A self-hosted past without an answer model refuses /answer. The wiki notices and serves the recall evidence as the page body instead, so it works on every deployment.
• Sources are numbered by their recall rank. Cited ones are listed first and tinted; the rest appear under "Also found". Each card can unfold the verbatim excerpts it derives from.
• The question lives in the URL (/?q=...), so a page is a link you can send. The sidebar is the list of questions this browser asked, kept in localStorage.

Deploy it

It is a stock Next.js app: anything that runs next build and next start with the four environment variables above will do. The only secret is PAST_API_KEY, and it is only read on the server.

Develop

npm run typecheck   # tsc, strict
npm run lint
npm test            # vitest: the ask flow, citation parsing, history, the seed, the MediaWiki export
npm run build

The tests talk to a fake fetch and never reach past. Nothing here is mocked with a framework; the fakes live next to the tests.

Layout

app/
  page.tsx            # the one screen
  api/ask/route.ts    # the one server route (holds the key)
components/           # Wiki (state + URL), AskBar, Sidebar, Article, Sources
lib/past/             # typed client for /answer, /recall and /ingest/batch
lib/wiki/             # ask (answer-or-evidence), page model, history, config, seed, mediawiki
scripts/seed.ts       # npm run seed
scripts/mediawiki.ts  # npm run mediawiki
sample/               # notes to seed a fresh project with
tests/

MIT.