chemenu/docs/reference/commands/catalog-and-log.md

Catalog and log

The generated catalog of the wiki and its append-only operations log.

Contents

• index rebuild
• log append
• log status

index rebuild

Regenerate the catalog from every page's frontmatter.

Synopsis

• wikitool index rebuild [--dry-run]

Options

  --dry-run   Print what would be written instead of writing it
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Examples

tools/wikitool index rebuild
tools/wikitool index rebuild --dry-run

Behaviour

• Rewrites kb/index.md as a map: statistics, one row per collection and per area, and links to the shards - no page rows.
• Writes the page tables to a generated INDEX.md in each collection. An area with more than 50 rows gets its own INDEX.md in its directory.
• Deletes stale shards - an INDEX.md of a collection or area that no longer exists - in the same pass.
• Warns about every page nested more than one directory below its collection; it is still catalogued, folded into its area.
• --dry-run prints every file it would write and every stale shard it would remove, and writes nothing.

Properties

• Changes files: yes
• Idempotent: yes
• Atomic: No - each catalog file (the map plus one shard per collection/area) is rewritten independently, then stale shards are removed; an interruption can leave some regenerated and others not
• Counts toward the session call budget: yes
• Can reach the network: no

Exit codes

• 0 - success
• 1 - An I/O error while writing or removing a catalog file (rare)

See also

• wikitool search - finds a page without reading the catalog
• wikitool lint - its Nested Pages finding is what the warning previews
• instructions/publish-cycle.md - where a write session runs this

log append

Append a formatted entry to kb/log.md.

Synopsis

• wikitool log append --op ingest|lint|create|update|delete|rename|move|query --title "..." [--body "..."|--body-file path]

Options

  --op <str>          ingest|query|lint|create|update|delete|rename|move (query:
                      legacy, no longer written by the stack)  [required]
  --title <str>       Brief description, e.g. a source path  [required]
  --body <str>        Optional multi-line details
  --body-file <path>  Read the body from a file instead of --body
  -h, --help          Show this message and exit.

Examples

tools/wikitool log append --op ingest --title "raw/articles/docker-cheatsheet.md" --body "Created [[Docker]]; updated [[Container]]."
tools/wikitool log append --op lint --title "2026-09-26" --body-file lint-summary.md

Behaviour

• Appends one entry to kb/log.md: a ## [YYYY-MM-DD] <op> | <title> heading, the body if one is given, and a --- separator.
• Not idempotent: every successful run appends a new entry, including a repeated one.
• query is a legacy value: older versions wrote one entry per read-only query. It is still accepted so existing logs and an instance's own instructions keep working, but the stack no longer writes it - a read is not an operation on the wiki.

Properties

• Changes files: yes
• Idempotent: no
• Atomic: Yes - single append
• Counts toward the session call budget: yes
• Can reach the network: no

Exit codes

• 0 - success
• 1 - --op is not one of ingest, query, lint, create, update, delete, rename, move
• 1 - --body-file is missing, not a readable file, or not valid UTF-8

See also

• wikitool log status - counts the ingests logged since the last lint
• instructions/publish-cycle.md - where a write session runs this

log status

Read-only: count ingest entries logged since the last lint entry.

Synopsis

• wikitool log status

Options

  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Examples

tools/wikitool log status

Behaviour

• Counts the ingest entries in kb/log.md after the most recent lint entry, or since the start of the log if it was never linted, and the total number of entries.
• At 10 or more it prints that the wiki-lint skill is due next - the every-10-sources full lint of the Maintenance Schedule.
• Read-only; safe to retry freely.

Properties

• Changes files: no
• Idempotent: yes
• Atomic: Read-only
• Counts toward the session call budget: yes
• Can reach the network: no

Exit codes

• 0 - success
• 0 - kb/log.md is missing or empty - reported as nothing logged, not a failure

See also

• wikitool log append - writes the entries this counts
• wiki-lint skill - what the threshold asks for
• tools/CONTRACT.md § Maintenance schedule - the cadence this reports on