Build a knowledge graph

Quaid’s links table holds typed, temporal cross-references between pages. This recipe shows how to create them at the CLI, traverse them, and use temporal validity to capture relationships that change over time.

Create a typed link

quaid link people/alice companies/river-ai \
  --relationship founder_of \
  --valid-from 2024-01-15 \
  --db ~/memory.db

Both ends must already exist as pages. --relationship is free-form; conventions like founder_of, mentions, supersedes, manages are common. --valid-from and --valid-until are optional ISO-8601 dates.

If you omit --relationship, it defaults to related.

Wiki-style links inside the body

[[other-page]] syntax in a page body is parsed at write/import time into links rows with source_kind = 'wiki_link'. Programmatic links (the quaid link CLI or memory_link MCP tool) carry source_kind = 'programmatic'. Both are returned by links and backlinks.

Close an interval

Alice leaves RiverAI. Don’t delete the link — close it:

quaid links people/alice --db ~/memory.db   # find the link_id
quaid link-close <LINK_ID> --valid-until 2026-04-01 --db ~/memory.db

The link still exists in the database; subsequent traversal with --temporal current excludes it, but --temporal all keeps it.

List outbound and inbound links

quaid links people/alice --db ~/memory.db                    # outbound
quaid backlinks companies/river-ai --db ~/memory.db          # inbound
quaid links people/alice --temporal all --db ~/memory.db     # include closed intervals

Traverse the neighbourhood

quaid graph people/alice --depth 2 --db ~/memory.db

Returns a JSON object with nodes and edges for an N-hop BFS from the seed slug. --temporal current (default) honors valid_from/valid_until; --temporal all traverses everything.

quaid graph people/alice --depth 2 --temporal all --db ~/memory.db

Remove a link

quaid unlink people/alice companies/river-ai --db ~/memory.db
quaid unlink people/alice companies/river-ai --relationship founder_of --db ~/memory.db

Without --relationship, every edge between the two pages is removed. With it, only that specific edge.

We recommend link-close over unlink when the relationship was real but ended — the historical record is what makes graph traversal useful over time.

Useful relationships to standardize

There’s no enforced taxonomy, but these are common:

Relationship	Meaning
founder_of, employed_by, joined, left	Person ↔ Company
mentions, cites, references	Page ↔ Page (lightweight)
supersedes, superseded_by	Decision ↔ Decision
manages, reports_to	Person ↔ Person
partnered_with, acquired, acquired_by	Company ↔ Company
commits_to, committed_by	Person ↔ Commitment

Pick a small vocabulary and stick to it; the temporal fields encode the when, the relationship encodes the what.

See it via MCP

For agents, the same surface lives at:

• memory_link — create
• memory_link_close — close interval
• memory_backlinks — inbound
• memory_graph — traverse

See the MCP tool reference for parameters.

Tips

• Temporal links over deletion. Closed intervals are queryable history; deleted links are gone.
• Use valid_from/valid_until aggressively. They cost nothing and unlock “who was at RiverAI in April 2026?” queries.
• Run quaid validate --links. Detects dangling endpoints (e.g. when a page was renamed and a link wasn’t updated).