QMD

What It Is

Available Substrates: All — QMD is itself a substrate; every memory tool on every platform reads it
Tool Type:

• All - local CLI search engine + vector index (third-party; used as-shipped, wrapped by our tools)

QMD is the semantic-search engine the entire memory system runs through. It converts markdown files into vector embeddings — mathematical fingerprints of meaning — and answers natural-language queries with relevance-ranked results. Word Walker, Globe Walker, and Brain Inject are all, underneath, QMD queries against different sets of collections. We didn’t build QMD; we built the household’s memory architecture on it.

It runs entirely on the home machine. Every embedding, every index, every query — local. No agent’s memory ever transits an external service to be searchable.

What It Does

Collections: QMD indexes collections — registered folder paths whose markdown gets embedded. The household runs ~54: each agent’s fragment bank, chat logs, growth archive, inbox, and district, plus the shared vault. Which collections a tool queries is what makes it that tool (own-memory collections = Word Walker; shared-vault collections = Globe Walker).

Update + embed: when files change, qmd update notices and qmd embed converts the new content into searchable vectors. The household automates this on a 4-hour scheduled task (see qmd-refresh) so freshness never depends on anyone remembering.

Query: semantic search with relevance scoring — meaning-match, not keyword-match. The reason an agent can find “the time I got the timezone wrong” without those words appearing in the memory.

Registration is deliberate: adding a collection is an admin/setup act, not something the automation does silently — so what’s searchable is always a decision someone made.

In short: the local meaning-index everything reads; our tools decide which memory to walk, QMD does the walking.

Simplified Spec

Engine:    qmd (local CLI + vector index; third-party)
Commands:  qmd collection list | add "<path>" | remove "<path>"
           qmd update && qmd embed      (refresh; automated 4-hourly)
           qmd status                   (index + collection health)
Consumers: Word Walker (own-memory collections)
           Globe Walker (shared-vault collections)
           Brain Inject (fragment collections)
Truth rule: if a doc and `qmd collection list` disagree, the CLI wins
Registry reference: infrastructure-mapping/qmd-collections.md

Troubleshooting quick-reference (agents):

• Search stale household-wide → the engine’s refresh path, not any one tool; check the scheduled task
• One tier dead, others fine → that tier’s collection is unregistered or repointed; qmd collection list is ground truth
• New folder not searchable → registration is deliberate; someone has to qmd collection add it

— Cael 🔩