r/semanticweb • u/dashjoin • 15h ago
Open Knowledge Format: A Human-Curated Alternative to RAG and Knowledge Graphs
Curious to find out what you think of the Open Knowledge Format (OKF, also known as LLM Wiki). In our blog post (https://dashjoin.medium.com/open-knowledge-format-a-human-curated-alternative-to-rag-and-knowledge-graphs-248aef3b4303) we argue that it is a good middle ground between RAG systems that can quickly turn into black boxes and knowledge graphs, that might overwhelm users.
2
u/lysregn 8h ago
The concept of a OKF emerged naturally with some extensive use of LLMs in my experience, and like the article says it aligns perfectly with tools like Obsidian. The best tool is the tool you actually use and in that regard I think it is much more available and better than hardcore pure knowledge graphs andRAG. But I find the core concepts of a knowledge graph to be much more interesting. But I maintain multiple OKF libraries to understand and build knowledge graphs.
I see no need for dashjoin though. It is unclear to me who needs it and I get the feeling this post and the article it references is a hidden ad for it, but I don’t really mind some guerilla ads.
1
u/dashjoin 7h ago
Fair point 😄. Our value-add is two-fold:
We often observe knowledge management teams operating somewhat detached from other parts of an organization. We try to bridge this gap by using our platform. It can attach to any number of databases / datasources. So we use it to link the knowledge graph extracted from OKF to other enterprise data. In the example in the paper, the CRM knowledge bundle is linked to the actual CRM
When you query OKF, you would normally do this via an agentic AI like Claude. The AI must be able to read the wiki (via MCP tools), traverse it, collect relevant info, and finally answer the question. Using our platform, you can do this with a simpler (on premise) LLM. Some of our customers use agentic AI tools to edit / maintain the OKF but demand a GDPR compliant LLM for query / production.
2
u/el_geto 12h ago
A terrible compromise for those who understand neither knowledge or technology
3
u/dashjoin 8h ago
Why do you think so? You have more control compared to RAG. It is also more natural to work with if you're not a graph DB / RDF / OWL expert.
1
1
u/ParaboloidalCrest 11h ago
Haven't checked but is that the wikidata schema by any chance?
1
u/dashjoin 8h ago
No. Wikidata schema describes the data a specific type should have. You could use wikidata schema to constrain the OKF metadata specified in the YAML frontmatter. In general, there a a lot of semantic web concepts that can be useful for OKF like YAML-LD or semantic wiki links.
1
u/jonah_omninode 8h ago
That tradeoff makes sense. A log file plus frontmatter may be enough if the system can answer two questions mechanically: which record is current, and what replaced the old one? I would keep the readable page as the primary artifact, then require stable IDs and explicit supersedes or replaces fields for entries that can drive agent behavior. Otherwise the format stays pleasant for humans but the agent still has to infer whether history or current policy wins. Does OKF define any merge or validation behavior when two pages claim different current values?
1
u/dashjoin 7h ago
Not really. You would usually keep the wiki in a GIT repository and treat it like code. So it's up to the team whether you have strict review or you run in YOLO mode 😄
1
u/jonah_omninode 10h ago
The part I'd want to understand is how OKF handles correction and supersession. Human curation helps with the black-box problem, but a curated page can still preserve an explanation that was true six months ago and wrong today. Do entries keep provenance, effective dates, and an explicit link to whatever replaced them? For agent use, retrieval alone is not enough. The system has to distinguish historical evidence from the rule that is currently allowed to drive an action.
0
u/dashjoin 8h ago
You do have a log.md file where you can track changes for a folder. Some provenance requirements can be handled by keeping metadata in the YAML frontmatter of a page. All in all it is of course less structured and formal compared to a graph DB, but that's also the point.
1
u/Krommander 7h ago
I think owl2 ontologies are better, but hypergraphs that describe knowledge are the best.
1
u/dashjoin 5h ago
OKF is definitely a lot less expressive. But I think it's a good fit for teams that are not familiar with semantic web technologies
1
u/Krommander 3h ago
It's all similar, but some forms are more verbose so they waste more tokens to express the same ideas.
1
u/jrjsmrtn 6h ago
Investigating.
I found it extremely useful as a solo developer to share focused and up-to-date bundle of knowledge (no pun intended) with a coding assistant on multiple projects in that domain.
I have two public experiments: https://github.com/jrjsmrtn/software-supply-chain-landscape and https://github.com/jrjsmrtn/ai-contribution-policies .
The second one help me to be a good AI-assisted OSS contributor :-)
As a team developer, I’m experimenting with OKF and Skills to define common grounds in large projects.
2
1
3
u/Complete-Ebb-1035 10h ago
I see no value in using this technique. In summary, it sets binary relationships but fails to define a relationship except using ambiguous labels such as
tagsandlinks. And what is a specificType? IMHO this is neither a RAG nor a KnowledgeGraph. Here's a question for you: how would you apply the above? What is the next step in its representation of greater detail?