Give Claude your domain knowledge.

Write what you know in Markdown. Pramana makes it available to Claude — automatically. When your conversation touches your domain, Claude looks up the relevant knowledge without you having to ask.

Without Pramana, Claude guesses your domain rules. With Pramana, Claude looks them up:

Before: "I'd suggest a standard 30-day return policy…" (generic guess) After: "Per your pricing-rules artifact, early-payment discount is 5% within 10 days, and enterprise customers get volume discounts." (grounded in your knowledge)

The reference implementation of the semantic layer described in Knowledge Engineering: The Future of AI-Assisted Software Engineering.

• Claude Code with plugin marketplace support

The install script downloads a standalone binary — no Bun, Node.js, or other runtime needed.

Platform support: macOS (arm64, x64), Linux (x64), Windows (x64).

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lambda-brahman/pramana/main/install.sh | sh

In Claude Code (requires plugin marketplace support):

/plugin marketplace add lambda-brahman/pramana
/plugin install pramana@lambda-brahman

Create a Markdown file in a directory (e.g., ./knowledge/onboarding.md):

---
slug: onboarding-flow
title: Onboarding Flow
tags: [process, user-facing]
relationships:
  depends-on: [user-account]
  relates-to: [email-verification]
---

# Onboarding Flow

New users go through a three-step onboarding.

## Steps

1. Create account via [[depends-on::user-account]]
2. Verify email via [[email-verification]]
3. Complete profile

## Rules

- Email must be verified within 24 hours
- Profile completion is optional but recommended

Each file is a knowledge artifact — a self-contained piece of expertise with a name (slug), labels (tags), and connections to other artifacts (relationships).

In Claude Code, ask Claude to set things up:

/pramana:setup ./knowledge

Claude starts Pramana, checks that your files were loaded correctly, and reports any issues. Once running, Claude automatically uses your knowledge base whenever the conversation needs it.

There are two ways to use Pramana — nudge Claude with a hint in your prompt, or invoke the query skill directly.

Mention the knowledge base in parentheses and Claude will look things up:

"I'm working on the checkout page. How does order validation work?
(use /pramana:query to check the KB)"

"What would break if we changed the pricing model?
(check the knowledge base with /pramana:query)"

Claude sees the hint, invokes the query skill, searches your knowledge, reads the relevant sections, follows relationship chains, and answers grounded in what you wrote.

When you know exactly what you want to look up:

/pramana:query "what are the onboarding rules?"
/pramana:query "show me everything that depends on user-account"

For multiple knowledge bases, specify which one:

/pramana:query law "what is negligence?"
/pramana:query eng "how does the build pipeline work?"

A knowledge file is a Markdown file with a small header (called "frontmatter") that tells Pramana what the file is about.

Every file needs at least a slug — a short, lowercase name that identifies the artifact:

---
slug: pricing-rules
title: Pricing Rules
tags: [business, billing]
relationships:
  depends-on: [subscription-plan, discount-policy]
  relates-to: [invoice]
---

There are two types:

• depends-on — this artifact needs the other to make sense. "Pricing rules depend on subscription plans."
• relates-to — these artifacts are connected but independent. "Pricing rules relate to invoices."

Write naturally using Markdown headings:

# Pricing Rules

## Tiers

Enterprise customers get volume discounts...

## Discounts

Early-payment discount is 5% if paid within 10 days...

Use ## headings to break content into sections. Claude reads specific sections rather than loading entire files, so good headings help Claude find exactly what it needs.

Use double-bracket links to connect ideas:

Pricing depends on the [[depends-on::subscription-plan]].
See also [[invoice]] for billing details.

These links are optional — the relationships header is what Pramana uses to build the graph. But inline links make your files more readable.

Author agents are useful when you want consistent artifacts across a team, or when generating knowledge as a CI artifact (e.g., API docs from code).

First, create an author agent that captures your writing standards:

/pramana:create-author commerce api-docs

Claude asks open-ended questions about your domain expertise, writing style, and quality standards, then saves an author agent. You can create multiple authors for different purposes (e.g., API reference vs tutorials).

Then invoke the author agent to create artifacts:

@"author-api-docs-commerce (agent)" write about API rate limiting

Claude delegates to the author agent, which writes artifacts that match your standards — with proper connections to existing artifacts.

If you have separate domains (e.g., legal knowledge and engineering knowledge), serve them together:

/pramana:setup ./law ./engineering

Claude helps you name each knowledge base and keeps them separate. When you ask a question, specify the domain:

/pramana:query law "what is negligence?"
/pramana:query eng "how does the build pipeline work?"

When the Pramana plugin is installed and running, Claude has four ways to access your knowledge:

• Search — find artifacts by topic or keyword
• Get — read a specific artifact or section
• Traverse — follow dependency chains ("what does X depend on?")
• List — see all artifacts, optionally filtered by tags

Claude chooses the right approach automatically based on your question. It reads specific sections rather than loading everything, keeping conversations focused and efficient.

Pramana runs on port 5111 by default. To change it:

pramana start --port 5200            # CLI flag
PRAMANA_PORT=5200 pramana start      # environment variable

Run pramana lint to check your files for frontmatter errors, broken links, and missing slugs:

pramana lint ./knowledge

# Latest
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lambda-brahman/pramana/main/install.sh | sh

# Specific version (see Releases for available versions)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lambda-brahman/pramana/main/install.sh | sh -s v0.8.1

See Releases for binaries.

• Technical reference — CLI commands, HTTP API, document format, multi-tenant details
• Plugin guide — Skill details, invocation modes, architecture

Daemon won't start Check if another process is using port 5111: lsof -i :5111. Use --port or PRAMANA_PORT to pick a different port.

Files not loading Ensure your Markdown files have valid frontmatter with at least a slug field. Run pramana lint ./knowledge to catch formatting issues.

Claude isn't using the knowledge base Verify the plugin is installed (/plugin list in Claude Code) and Pramana is running. Add a hint like (use /pramana:query to check the KB) to your prompt.

"Connection refused" errors The Pramana daemon may have stopped. Re-run /pramana:setup ./knowledge to restart it.

Stale data after editing files Restart the daemon — Pramana loads files at startup. Re-run /pramana:setup to pick up changes.

Remove the binary and the Claude Code plugin:

rm ~/.local/bin/pramana

In Claude Code:

/plugin uninstall pramana@lambda-brahman

bun install
bun run test          # unit + e2e tests
bun run test:precommit  # plugin workflow tests
bun run typecheck

Private