data-olympus

New here? Start with WHY.md. It is the story behind the project: the
problem we kept hitting with coding agents, what data-olympus does differently, how
it relates to Google's Open Knowledge Format, and where our benchmarks say it is
strong and where it is not. The rest of this README is the technical reference.

data-olympus is a governance-grade knowledge-base format and server for agent workforces. It is designed to be readable by Open Knowledge Format (OKF) consumers: it inherits OKF's directory structure, frontmatter conventions, reserved filenames, and link model, then layers governance extensions on top (stable id, controlled type/status/tier fields, supersedes chains) plus a single-writer MCP server and a CLI. Formal conformance testing against the OKF reference tooling is not yet in place (tracked in issue #82). The result is a git-native, version-controlled document graph of engineering standards, architectural decisions, and project knowledge that agents and humans can read, search, and extend without any proprietary service.

It governs decisions, not code. When an agent is about to make a choice (a library, a pattern, a migration), data-olympus surfaces the established standard or decision that should govern that choice. It is deliberately not a code-search, reference-finding, or "where is X used" tool: LSP, grep, and Sourcegraph already do that well. The retrieval task it targets is coding-intent to governing-rule, and it helps where current model interaction during vibe-coding is weakest: keeping the model aligned to patterns the team has already established as correct.

Status: pre-1.0 beta. Latest release: v0.3.0.

Why

• Portable, no lock-in. The entire KB is a directory of markdown files in git. No database, no proprietary schema, no vendor.
• Git-native diffs and review. Every change is a commit. Proposed edits go through a pending queue before commit; history is plain git log.
• Agent and human readable. Plain markdown with YAML frontmatter. No SDK required to read or author a document.
• Governed multi-agent writes. The single-writer MCP pipeline (advisory locks, per-session worktrees, durable push queue) prevents concurrent write races without requiring distributed locking infrastructure.
• Queryable by status, tier, and type. Filter by status: accepted, tier: T1, or type: decision without post-processing. The supersedes chain makes it possible to trace decision history across the graph.
• Designed to be OKF-readable. Built on OKF's directory structure, frontmatter conventions, reserved filenames, and link model; formal conformance testing against OKF reference tooling is tracked in issue #82, not yet implemented.

Quickstart

Requires Python 3.13+ and uv.

# Install
uv venv && uv pip install -e '.[dev]'

# Lint the example bundle
uv run data-olympus lint example-bundle

# Start the MCP server against the example bundle
./scripts/run-local.sh

See docs/quickstart.md for the full local-run walkthrough, including curl and kb CLI queries.

Documentation

• SPEC.md: format specification (bundle layout, frontmatter schema, serving contracts).
• docs/quickstart.md: verified local-run procedure.
• docs/adoption.md: bring-your-own-KB guide (author, lint, index, serve, wire an agent).
• docs/serving.md: single-replica serving model, read-only replicas, git pull loop, health/readiness/liveness split, proxy headers, audit-log rotation.
• docs/operations.md: production runbook — backup, upgrade, recovery playbooks (degraded/fetch-failed, history rewrite, frozen/demoted push entries, orphaned locks), and the health/alerting model.
• docs/comparison.md: how data-olympus relates to OKF, enterprise catalogs, markdown KB tools, agent-context conventions, RAG, and ADR tooling.
• docs/enforcement.md: turning the KB into a mandatory consultation gate (hooks, kb enforce).
• benchmarks/README.md: retrieval benchmark methodology and how to reproduce the numbers in docs/comparison.md.
• SECURITY.md: supported versions and how to report a vulnerability.

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.