dkb - Developer Knowledge Base

Local documentation manager for vibe coding with Claude Code.

Local .md files > MCP

Install

# Install with uv
uv tool install dkb

# Or with pipx
pipx install dkb

Usage

$ dkb add tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/src/docs --version-url tailwindlabs/tailwindcss
✓ tailwindcss 4.3.3 → ~/.local/share/dkb/tailwindcss 6.1s

$ dkb add colinhacks/zod --pin v3.24.0 --name zod-3
✓ zod-3 3.24.0 → ~/.local/share/dkb/zod-3 5.5s

$ dkb                      # alone: the status
NAME         VERSION  SOURCE                        VERSION FROM              DOCS CHANGED  CHECKED
tailwindcss  4.3.3    tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com  tailwindlabs/tailwindcss  35d ago       2m ago
zod-3        3.24.0   colinhacks/zod@v3.24.0        -                         1d ago        2m ago
docs at ~/.local/share/dkb/<name> · full config: dkb status --json

$ dkb update               # parallel, a live table; skips what did not move upstream
-  tailwindcss  unchanged  4.3.3
-  zod-3        unchanged  3.24.0

$ dkb update tailwind
Error: not in the catalogue: 'tailwind' (did you mean 'tailwindcss'?); `dkb status` lists it

$ dkb add n0-computer/iroh-ffi/IrohLib/Docs
⨯ fetching iroh-ffi 7.4s path 'IrohLib/Docs' not found; 'IrohLib/' has: .swiftpm/, Sources/, Tests/, .gitignore, README.md

The same table is colored in a terminal and plain aligned text when piped (dkb status | grep zod, an agent's shell). Data goes to stdout (status, status --json); progress and messages go to stderr. dkb -h lists the files dkb owns and more add examples. Terminal output is py-utils cli (the port of ts-utils cli): tables, palette, live regions.

Configuration

Two files, two owners:

The catalogue is the declaration and is meant to be tracked in a dotfiles repo. dkb update reconciles the cache with it: clones anything declared that is missing, re-clones anything whose upstream commit or declaration changed, re-reads every version and description, prunes clones nobody declares, and regenerates the skill; it exits 1 if any repo failed. A failed fetch keeps the previous clone and version: new content is assembled beside the old and swapped in only when complete. Without a declared branch, a repo follows its remote's default branch, whatever it is called. Metadata comes from gh when it is logged in, else from GitHub's public API (60 requests/hour). A fresh machine is one dkb update away from the same knowledge base. dkb status exits 1 while a declared repo has no clone, so it doubles as a drift check.

Three kinds of entry:

A pin is for the docs of the version a project uses: zod (following) and zod-3 (pinned) can sit side by side. A local entry is stored as ~/..., so one catalogue serves every machine; on a machine without that directory, dkb update says so and exits 1.

// ~/.config/dkb/config.json
{
  "repositories": {
    "next.js": { "url": "https://github.com/vercel/next.js.git", "paths": ["docs"] },
    "zod-3": { "url": "https://github.com/colinhacks/zod.git", "paths": [], "pin": "v3.24.0" },
    "my-lib": { "local": "~/Developer/my-lib" }
  }
}

Upgrading from dkb 2: the catalogue used to live in the data dir as one file with the state mixed in. dkb 3 refuses to run while that file exists and prints where each half goes.

Features

• ✨ Auto-naming - No need to specify names, automatically derived from repositories
• 🎯 Path-specific URLs - Add only the docs you need: dkb add owner/repo/path
• 🔗 Multiple URL formats:
  • Full URLs: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/tree/main/docs
  • Shorthand: tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/src/docs
  • Classic: https://github.com/denoland/docs.git
• 🏠 Gitea/Forgejo support - Works with codeberg.org and self-hosted forges: dkb add https://code.haverbeke.berlin/wordgard/website/src/branch/main/site/docs
• 📦 Version tracking - Track versions from a different repository with --version-url
• 📌 Pinned versions - --pin <tag|commit> caches the docs of the version you actually use
• 🔗 Local repos - dkb add ~/Developer/my-lib links your working copy, so your own libraries are in the skill and never stale
• 🚀 Parallel updates - All repos update concurrently with live progress spinners
• ⚡ Smart skip - Unchanged repos detected via git ls-remote without cloning
• 📂 Sparse checkout - Repos with paths only fetch the files they need
• 🧭 Errors that say what to do - typo suggestions, the real contents of a mistyped path, git's own message instead of its command line
• 🤖 Claude Code skill - Maintains ~/.claude/skills/dkb/SKILL.md; the always-visible description indexes the catalogue so the agent knows what's cached without running anything. The description stays within the Agent Skills spec's 1024 characters (names that don't fit become "+N more, all listed in the skill"); the body, loaded in full on invocation, carries every entry's version, source, location and layout