Open Knowledge Format · v0.2binder0.5.1

Turn a plain-markdown corpus into aconformant OKF bundle.

binder is a Go command-line tool that converts a plain-markdown corpus into a conformant Open Knowledge Format (OKF) v0.2bundle — and validates OKF bundles against the spec's conformance rules. Built for pipelines: deterministic output, a lossless frontmatter round-trip, and a discipline of never asserting the unverified.

Start the tutorial What binder is Command reference

input.md→binder convert · enrich→bundle/↩input.mdfrontmatter preserved

Lossless frontmatter round-trip — where binder recognises the fence.

Ingest

Plain markdown → conformant OKF

binder convert walks a directory of ordinary markdown and writes an OKF v0.2 bundle: one concept per file, standard links and [[wikilinks]] rewritten to bundle-relative form, frontmatter-ref edges, #hashtags merged into tags, per-directory index navigation, and a generated provenance stamp. validate then checks a bundle against the OKF v0.2 §11 conformance rules.

What binder is

Trust

Lossless frontmatter round-trip, trust never fabricated

Unmodified frontmatter is preserved losslessly — every authored key and value survives untouched, including nested-map and list key order — so, where binder recognises the frontmatter, a round-trip changes nothing it did not have to. Trust tiers, staleness, and the attested flag are derived from frontmatter, never stored, and an attestation is stamped only when you pass --verified-by. Where an input must be normalized at the read boundary, binder discloses it rather than claiming a preservation it did not deliver.

The round-trip

Agent-native

MCP server and graph projection

binder mcp runs binder as a stdio Model Context Protocol server, exposing seven tools (the additive verbs convert/validate/review/lint/graph plus the read-only list_graphs and query_graph), returning the same deterministic binder.report/v1 payloads as --json. graph exports the concept graph as dot/json/graphml/html, and project projects a bundle into offline property-graph DDL (Spanner SQL/PGQ).

The agent surface

Install

Current release:binder0.5.1

Homebrew is the recommended path on macOS and Linux; ago install works with the Go toolchain. See theinstallation guide for direct downloads, checksums, and version notes.

# Homebrew (macOS + Linux)
brew install ghchinoy/tap/binder

# or with the Go toolchain
go install github.com/ghchinoy/binder@latest