vouch

Git-native, review-gated knowledge base for LLM agents. MCP server + JSONL tool server + CLI.

Agents should not start every session with amnesia — but they shouldn't get to write whatever they want either.

vouch gives LLM agents durable memory with an explicit review gate: sessions capture themselves, agents propose writes, and nothing becomes durable knowledge until you approve it. Approved artifacts are plain files under .vouch/ — YAML claims, markdown pages — so the KB lives in your repo, is reviewed like code, diffs cleanly, and travels with git clone.

The destination is the one Andrej Karpathy's llm-wiki idea file sketches: stop using LLMs as search engines that rediscover your documents on every question — use them as tireless knowledge engineers that compile, cross-reference, and maintain a living wiki, while humans curate and think. vouch is that idea with the write path made trustworthy. vouch compile has an LLM draft the topic pages, but every page cites approved claims, every [claim: …] citation is machine-verified before the draft is filed, and the drafts pass through the same review gate as every other write. The LLM compiles; the human approves; the wiki compounds.

Watch it work (110 seconds)

capture → summarize → approve → compile → recall. Captured live from the review console, no mockups — the preview above is muted and 3× speed; the full cut is ▶ docs/vouch-how-it-works.mp4. A Claude Code session captures itself, an LLM summarizes what the session meant, a human approves it at the gate, vouch compile distills the approved claims into cited topic pages (every [claim: …] citation machine-verified, still gated), and the film closes on real vouch recall output — the wiki the video just built, injected into the next session's first turn.

Everything below exists to reproduce that loop on your own project.

Install

# one-liner (Linux + macOS) — picks a Python, ensures pipx, installs vouch-kb
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vouchdev/vouch/main/install.sh | sh

# …or directly via pipx (vouch-kb on PyPI; the command stays `vouch`)
pipx install vouch-kb

The one-liner is POSIX sh and never needs sudo — inspect install.sh first if you'd like. Prefer containers? The released image runs the same CLI and MCP server (ghcr.io/vouchdev/vouch):

docker run -i --rm -v "$PWD:/data" ghcr.io/vouchdev/vouch:latest          # stdio MCP server
docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/data" ghcr.io/vouchdev/vouch:latest status      # any CLI command

Reproduce the loop on your project

1. Set up the KB and wire Claude Code (one-time, per repo):

cd /path/to/your/project
vouch init
vouch install-mcp claude-code

init creates .vouch/ with a starter config; install-mcp writes .mcp.json (the kb.* MCP tools), the /vouch-* slash commands, and three hooks — PostToolUse capture, SessionEnd rollup, SessionStart recall. Restart Claude Code so they load.

2. Point compile at an LLM — the only step that needs a model. In .vouch/config.yaml:

compile:
  llm_cmd: "claude -p --model sonnet"

3. Work a session — it captures itself. Use Claude Code normally. Each tool call is harvested into a gitignored scratch buffer, and at session end the buffer rolls up — mechanically, no LLM — into one pending session-summary page. Never auto-approved: the next session greets you with

🔔 1 auto-captured session summary(ies) awaiting review — run `vouch review`.

4. Approve at the gate.

vouch review                    # walk pending proposals one at a time

The browser console in the video is the vouch webapp — chat, review, pending queue, claims, and stats over a running KB. Connect it in two commands:

vouch serve --transport http    # serves the kb.* surface on 127.0.0.1:8731
# then, in a clone of the vouch webapp:
npm install && npm run dev      # opens http://localhost:5173 — point the
                                # connect dialog at http://127.0.0.1:8731

Lighter alternatives ship with vouch itself: vouch review-ui (a built-in browser queue; pipx install 'vouch-kb[web]' for the extra), or piecemeal vouch pending, vouch show <id>, vouch approve <id>, vouch reject <id> --reason "…".

5. Compile the wiki.

vouch compile                   # LLM drafts cited topic pages from approved claims
vouch review                    # drafts land in the same gate — approve the keepers

Every [claim: …] marker and [[wikilink]] in a draft is verified mechanically against the store; drafts whose citations don't hold are dropped before they reach you. See docs/compile.md.

6. Start the next session — it already knows. The SessionStart hook runs vouch recall, injecting every approved claim and page title into the first turn, so the session starts from your reviewed knowledge instead of re-discovering it.

Detection is Claude Code's hook contract: whatever a SessionStart hook prints becomes context in the session's opening turn. vouch recall prints the digest the video closes on — claims with their full text, pages by id and title:

<vouch-approved-knowledge>
# approved KB knowledge for this repo — 2 claim(s), 1 page(s). reviewed,
# cited, durable. use kb_read_page / kb_search for detail; kb_propose_*
# (human-approved) to add more.

## claims
- [auth-uses-jwt] Auth uses JWT tokens — decision from the design note.
- [vouch-starter-reviewed-knowledge] Vouch stores reviewed, cited knowledge
  in the repository so future agent sessions can retrieve agreed project
  context.

## pages
- [edit-in-obsidian] Edit in Obsidian
</vouch-approved-knowledge>

Only approved artifacts are ever emitted — archived, superseded, and still-pending items are excluded — and the digest is size-guarded (recall.max_chars) with an explicit truncation notice.

How the approved pages actually get used from there: recall carries the titles, and the session pulls full content on demand through the kb.* MCP tools — kb_search matches page bodies, kb_read_page returns a page's markdown plus the claims it cites, and kb_context bundles the most relevant claims and pages for a stated task. To pull a topic in explicitly, use the /vouch-recall <topic> slash command, or just ask Claude to check the KB. One thing to know: pages still sitting in vouch review are invisible to all of this — the gate applies to retrieval too, so a compiled page only starts informing sessions once you approve it.

7. Commit the knowledge with the code.

git add .vouch/ && git commit -m "kb: approve session summary"

Pending drafts (proposed/) and the derived search index (state.db) are gitignored — what lands in history is exactly what passed review.

The rules underneath

• Writes require approval. Agents file proposals via the kb.* MCP tools (or vouch serve --transport jsonl); approval is the only path to a durable artifact, and the approver must differ from the proposer unless you opt out.
• Claims must cite sources. A claim without evidence is a validation error, not a warning. Sources are content-hashed; the same evidence registered twice de-duplicates.
• History is append-only. Every mutation lands in a committed audit log — who proposed, who approved, citing what, when.

Going further

• docs/example-session.md — the full capture→approve→recall walkthrough with real output
• docs/getting-started.md — the agent-side flow
• SPEC.md — the protocol contract (object model, JSONL envelopes, trust metadata)
• vouch --help / vouch capabilities — the full CLI and machine-readable method surface
• vouch install-mcp <host> also wires cursor, codex, zed, windsurf, openclaw and friends (adapters/)
• vouch webapp — the chat-first browser console from the video; vouch-desktop wraps the same loop as a desktop app
• CONTRIBUTING.md — development setup and the test gate

License

MIT.