Reference

Skills & tools, by category

Two layers per area: skills are the agent workflows (they mostly write — create and sync notes); MCP tools are the query surface (mostly read). Each is tagged R read or W writes to the vault. For end-to-end walkthroughs that chain these together, see the Guides.

R read-only W writes to the vault Skills install per agent; MCP tools are called automatically.

Core & knowledge

Retrieval and link-graph plumbing shared by every install — the foundation the domain categories build on.

Skills

  • W vdb-link-weaver — weave [[wiki links]] into notes by content- and title-match.
  • W vdb-note-triage — classify untyped notes, fix frontmatter, move them to the right folder.
  • W vdb-research-assistant — save clippings, synthesize notes into wiki pages, track open questions.
  • W vdb-wiki-ingestion — turn stale raw notes into synthesized wiki pages; mark sources ingested.

MCP tools

ToolPurpose
R vault_searchFTS5 full-text search over heading-path chunks
R vault_semantic_searchEmbedding search (when embeddings are built)
R vault_get_chunksFetch content for search results
R vault_graphWiki-link graph traversal
R vault_sqlRead-only SQL query over the index
R vault_statusDB stats — note/chunk/table counts

Productivity

The original worked examples — type: task and type: shopping notes, plus trip and reminder workflows.

Skills

  • W vdb-shopping — browser-assisted shopping research → decision notes.
  • W vdb-travel — trip note with linked packing, shopping, and expense lists.
  • R vdb-due-notify — surface due / approaching items to Telegram (Hermes, OpenClaw).

MCP tools

ToolPurpose
R vault_due_tasksTasks due on/before a date
R vault_due_itemsAny dated item approaching its due date
R vault_shopping_suggestionsFrequent items from archived lists
R vault_stale_notesNotes updated since wiki ingestion
R vault_publish_logWhat was published outward, and when

Infrastructure / DevOps

Ten domain tables for ops, each mapping a type: value to a parser, a table, and a tool. The skills keep those tables fed and audited.

Skills

  • W vdb-incident-response — create, track, and resolve incidents.
  • W vdb-incident-review — sweep stale open incidents → triage note.
  • W vdb-runbook-manager — create / update / retrieve runbooks.
  • W vdb-cert-monitor — track TLS expiry, trigger renewal tasks.
  • W vdb-host-inventory-sync — sync live host / service state into the tables.
  • W vdb-vm-health-check — cross-reference live VM / container state against the inventory; flag what's down.
  • W vdb-network-audit — audit devices against network_devices.
  • W vdb-change-log — record changes with before/after + rollback.
  • W vdb-service-dashboard — (re)generate the services dashboard page.
  • W vdb-stale-service-audit — flag unknown / unhealthy services.
  • W vdb-iac-ingestor — parse Terraform / Pulumi / CDK / Ansible into the vault.
  • W vdb-source-ingestor — scan source repos → metadata into the vault.
  • R vdb-capacity-planner — match spare hardware to a deployment goal.
  • R vdb-security-posture — audit incidents, certs, services → risk report.
  • R vdb-service-checks — checklist audit for deploys and migrations.

MCP tools

ToolPurpose
R vault_host_lookupHosts by name, IP, or status
R vault_service_queryRunning services / containers
R vault_network_lookupNetwork device lookup
R vault_incidentsOpen / resolved incidents
R vault_runbookOperational runbook
R vault_spare_hardwareSpare hardware inventory
R vault_cert_expiryTLS certs expiring within N days
R vault_recent_changesInfrastructure change log
R vault_cloud_resourcesCloud resource inventory
R vault_source_reposSource repository metadata

Roadmap · opt-in

Goals → epics → stories as plain notes. Optionally, the write tools turn it into a pull-based queue agents work on their own — mark a story ready and an agent claims it, works it, and reports back. The claim is atomic, so two agents never grab the same story. Enable the "roadmap" group on the Setup tab.

Skills

  • W vdb-po — Product-Owner skill: build and manage the vault-native ticket tree (goals, epics, stories).
  • W vdb-sprint — agent work queue: claim a ready story atomically, execute it, write status back.

MCP tools

ToolPurpose
R vault_roadmap_summaryGoal / epic / story rollup
R vault_epic_storiesStories under an epic
R vault_ready_storiesStories marked ready to claim
R vault_story_candidatesStories needing grooming
W vault_claim_storyClaim a story atomically for an agent
W vault_update_story_statusWrite progress back to the note

QA impact graph · opt-in

A directed graph of service / call relationships plus QA scenarios. Given a change, find the affected scenarios and coverage gaps. Edges are derived from relationship frontmatter (calls/publishes/reads…). Enable the "qa" group.

Skills

  • R vdb-impact-analysis — given a change, find affected scenarios + coverage gaps.
  • W vdb-graph-sync — build / refresh graph_nodes and graph_edges.

MCP tools

ToolPurpose
R vault_blast_radiusWhat a node change can reach
R vault_affected_scenariosScenarios touched by a change
R vault_coverage_gapsPaths with no QA scenario
R vault_scenario_coverageWhat a scenario exercises
R vault_upstream_clientsWho calls a node
R vault_downstream_callsWhat a node calls

Delegation · opt-in

Hand a task to another agent running in an isolated git worktree — interactively (a tmux session you can take over) or fire-and-forget (a headless systemd-run job). A durable type: handoff note seeds the agent; each launch is recorded as a type: agent-session note. Enable the "dispatch" group.

Skills

  • W vdb-handoff — summarize context into a durable Handoffs/ note to save for later or pass on.
  • W vdb-handoff-session — spawn an interactive, takeoverable tmux session.
  • W vdb-dispatch — fire-and-forget headless delegation via systemd-run.

MCP tools

ToolPurpose
R vault_agent_sessionsList delegated sessions + their take-over command and status

Activity & reviews

Agent attribution and the periodic reviews that synthesize what happened. The server stamps the VAULT_AGENT env var on every query_log row, so multi-agent usage stays distinguishable.

Skills

  • R vdb-morning-briefing — daily briefing synthesized from vault data.
  • W vdb-weekly-review — weekly retro; saves a review note.
  • W vdb-periodic-review — monthly / quarterly strategic review.

MCP tools

ToolPurpose
W vault_log_activityLog a significant agent action to DB + markdown
R vault_activity_logQuery the activity log (date='today'|'week')
R vault_find_noteResolve a title to a path/ID

Publishing & sync

The vault is the source of truth, but not an island. Stories, epics, and incidents can push to and pull from external ticketing / project-management tools (GitHub Issues, GitLab, Jira). Sync is always explicit and user-controlled — no automated background writes — so the vault and the tracker converge only when you ask.

W vdb-publisher — publishing is its own skill.

Pushes vault content outward — to ticketing systems, wikis, static HTML, GitHub, or webhooks. It always runs a dry-run first, honors hard path/tag exclusions that are never published, and is configured through /vdb-setup. You decide what leaves the vault. Skill source →

Using the tools

Agents route to MCP tools automatically when a request is vault-shaped — phrase it in terms of your content.

Ask something like…Tool invoked
"what tasks are due this week"vault_due_tasks
"find my notes on Kubernetes networking"vault_searchvault_get_chunks
"what's running on my NAS"vault_service_query
"show open incidents"vault_incidents
"find the runbook for Coolify"vault_runbook
"what certs are expiring soon"vault_cert_expiry
"what changed on pmx-01 last week"vault_recent_changes
"what's the blast radius of changing auth-svc"vault_blast_radius
"find notes linked to this wiki page"vault_graph

The two-step read pattern

vault_search returns chunk IDs and scores, not content. Pass those IDs to vault_get_chunks to read. Agents chain both automatically — "find my notes on X and summarize them" triggers the pair.

Forcing an explicit call

If the agent isn't routing to MCP, name the tool:

agent prompt
"use vault_search to find notes about <topic>"
"call vault_due_tasks for today"
"query the vault database for services on <host>"

Customize the schema

Adding a domain table is a five-place lockstep — do all five or none. Run vdb lockstep to verify.

  1. Drop loop in _init_db() — add the table name
  2. CREATE TABLE in _init_db()
  3. Parser function — _parse_X_meta() / _parse_X_items()
  4. Dispatch arm in _index()elif note_type == "X":
  5. MCP tool in vault-mcp-server.py + entry in the TOOLS dict

Generic note structure (notes, chunks, links, tags, FTS) needs no changes for new content types. See docs/setup-guide.md for the full checklist, embedding models, and troubleshooting.