Two changes, one commit:
1. Reframe "weaknesses" as "extensions memex adds":
Karpathy's gist is a concept pitch, not an implementation. Reframe
the seven places memex extends the pattern as engineering-layer
additions rather than problems to fix. Cleaner narrative — memex
builds on Karpathy's work instead of critiquing it.
Touches README.md (Why each part exists + Credits) and
DESIGN-RATIONALE.md (section titles, trade-off framing, biggest
layer section, scope note at the end).
2. Replace docs/artifacts/signal-and-noise.html with the full
upstream version:
The earlier abbreviated copy dropped the MemPalace integration tab,
the detailed mitigation steps with effort pips, the impact
before/after cards, and the qmd vs ChromaDB comparison. This
restores all of that. Also swaps self-references from "LLM Wiki"
to "memex" while leaving external "LLM Wiki v2" community
citations alone (those refer to a separate pattern and aren't ours
to rename).
The live hosted copy at eric-turner.com/memex/signal-and-noise.html
has already been updated via scp — Hugo picks up static changes with
--poll 1s so the public URL reflects this file immediately.
Replace all four references to the Claude public artifact URL with the
self-hosted version at eric-turner.com/memex/signal-and-noise.html plus
the offline-capable archive at docs/artifacts/signal-and-noise.html.
The Claude artifact can now be unpublished without breaking any links
in the repo. The self-hosted HTML is deployed to the Hugo site's static
directory and lives alongside the archived copy in this repo — either
can stand on its own.
Archive a self-contained HTML copy of the design rationale artifact —
the interactive Signal & Noise analysis of Karpathy's pattern that
produced memex. Fully self-contained (inline CSS + JS, only external
dependency is Google Fonts), works offline, renders identically in any
modern browser.
Updated the README Credits section to link:
1. Live interactive version at eric-turner.com/memex/signal-and-noise.html
2. Original Claude artifact
3. Archived copy in this repo
4. Condensed written version in DESIGN-RATIONALE.md
The archived HTML means the analysis survives even if the live site or
the Claude artifact URL ever goes away.
Replace project self-references throughout README, SETUP, and the example
CLAUDE.md files. External artifact titles are preserved as-is since they
refer to the actual title of the Claude design artifact.
Also add a "Why 'memex'?" aside to the README that roots the project in
Vannevar Bush's 1945 "As We May Think" essay, where the term originates.
The compounding knowledge wiki is the LLM-era realization of Bush's
memex concept: the "associative trails" he imagined are the related:
frontmatter fields and wikilinks the agent maintains.
Kept lowercase where referring to the generic pattern (e.g. "an LLM wiki
persists its mistakes") since that refers to the class of system, not
this specific project.
A compounding LLM-maintained knowledge wiki.
Synthesis of Andrej Karpathy's persistent-wiki gist and milla-jovovich's
mempalace, with an automation layer on top for conversation mining, URL
harvesting, human-in-the-loop staging, staleness decay, and hygiene.
Includes:
- 11 pipeline scripts (extract, summarize, index, harvest, stage,
hygiene, maintain, sync, + shared library)
- Full docs: README, SETUP, ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN-RATIONALE, CUSTOMIZE
- Example CLAUDE.md files (wiki schema + global instructions) tuned for
the three-collection qmd setup
- 171-test pytest suite (cross-platform, runs in ~1.3s)
- MIT licensed
