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knowledge-as-code

Knowledge as Code (KaC) keeps your engineering knowledge in git, where people and AI coding sessions can both find it. Standards, decisions, runbooks, known fixes and the glossary each become a record: a Markdown document with a declared type, reviewed by pull request like any other change.

kac is the command-line tool that checks every record against the schema its type declares. It reports each fault against the file that caused it, and a broken cross-reference fails CI. It writes the indexes nobody should keep by hand. It also packages the records as a Claude Code plugin, so an agent can look up a standard before it writes code.

A repository of records, with the schema it runs, is a corpus. People read it as a wiki. Agents read the plugin, built from the same files, so nothing has to be kept true twice.

An agent writes back by filing an issue on your tracker. A person decides whether what it found becomes a record.

Where to start

This site has one section for each reader, and one page for whoever is still deciding whether to adopt KaC. A type is one kind of record, such as a runbook. Its schema is a YAML file under .schema/ that says what a record of that type has in it.

  • I am deciding whether to adopt it. Compared with alternatives says what KaC adds to a CLAUDE.md, an organisation's managed instructions, a documentation server or a wiki, and when one of those is enough.
  • I want to use kac. Use it shows you how to install the tool, run it over a corpus, wire it into CI and build the plugin. Getting started is its first page.
  • I want to understand the framework. The framework explains how the types are laid out, where they came from, and how to write a record.
  • I own a schema. Schema reference covers the keys a type file takes, the rule expression grammar, the checks and the export contract.
  • I want to work on kac. Maintaining kac covers building, testing, releasing and forking kac, and adding a check in C# or a report.

What lives elsewhere

Two documents sit outside this site, each written for a different reader. A corpus also receives its own knowledge-as-code.md, which is its way in to everything here.

What to know while changing the code is tooling/README.md, beside the code. It covers what each test layer checks inside, and how the round-trip scripts choose a corpus.

Maturity

Early. The tool is real and tested. The version on nuget.org sits below 1.0.0 because the commands may still change shape.

This site is built from main, so it can describe a kac no release includes yet. Ask your own copy what it is with kac --version, and read the changelog for what each published version brought. Where the two disagree, the site is ahead.

Every page here describes what exists today, except Design intent, which states the direction. The issue tracker says what has been considered and not yet built.