# PDR 007: Keep private knowledge agent-operable

- HTML version: https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/homelab/pdrs/007-keep-private-knowledge-agent-operable
- Project: Home Lab
- Status: Proposed
- Opened: 2026-08-15

## Context

Personal notes may include free-form writing, structured records, and private
diary material. Earlier tools made the owner maintain their ontology or kept
the useful source inside a hosted application. Neither approach fits a corpus
that should remain useful across tools and agent sessions.

The existing coding agents can already search, edit, connect, summarize, and
critique files. A separate AI subscription or chat interface would divide that
workflow.

## Proposed decision

Keep the private knowledge corpus in durable, readable files that both the
owner and existing agents can operate. Notes may use links, tags, and typed
metadata, but capture must not require a complete ontology or recurring manual
gardening.

Provide a comfortable Android, macOS, and Linux editing path. Keep the system
single-user and private, with no public publishing from the live corpus. An
agent may reorganize or enrich notes only through reviewable, reversible
changes. Publication remains a separate copy-and-review workflow.

Extensions may add views or commands, but they cannot become the only
representation of knowledge. Prefer built-in behavior and small needs-driven
extensions over maintaining another product inside the notes application.

## Consequences

The corpus can outlive either the human editor or agent index. Agents gain a
large privacy and deletion boundary, while offline edits and concurrent agent
changes may still conflict. File ownership and reversibility take priority
over collaboration and a polished hosted experience.

## Evaluation

Accept the proposal only when normal mobile capture is comfortable, agents can
answer corpus-wide questions and make reversible multi-note changes, a restore
succeeds, and useful structure improves retrieval without creating a manual
gardening habit.

## Migration note

This PDR extracts the workflow, ownership, privacy, and extension policies from
ADR 011. It keeps the original date and Proposed status. ADR 011 retains the
pilot architecture using Basic Memory, SilverBullet, Markdown, Git, Tailscale,
and the existing backup and monitoring services.

## Related records

- Project: [Home Lab](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/homelab.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 011: Basic Memory and SilverBullet for an extensible agentic knowledge base](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/homelab/adrs/011-basic-memory-silverbullet-agentic-knowledge-base.md)

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