Building an AI-Ready Knowledge Base Generator

20 years into my development career, and I'm still finding ways to innovate my workflow. Recently, I built something pretty interesting - a tool that helps developers create AI-ready knowledge bases from their codebases 🤖.

Let me tell you why this matters and how AI helped me build a tool to help others use AI better (meta, right?) 🤔

👉🏻 TLDR; Check it out here https://github.com/gommo/ai-kb

The Problem I Was Trying to Solve

As developers, we're all using AI tools these days. ChatGPT, Claude, GitHub Copilot - they're part of our daily workflow. But there's a catch: these AI assistants work best when they have context about your codebase.

Sure, you could copy-paste files individually, but that's tedious and error-prone. Plus, many files contain sensitive information or unnecessary details that add noise to the conversation.

Enter the AI Knowledge Base Generator

The tool I built is pretty straightforward in concept but powerful in practice. It:

Reads a configuration file that specifies which code files to include or exclude
Segments your code base into different collections of files to reduce context size
Handles various programming languages intelligently (especially whitespace-sensitive ones like Python)
Strips out unnecessary content like node_modules, environment files, and build artifacts
Generates markdown files that are perfectly formatted for AI tools

Think of it as a smart filter for your codebase that creates AI-friendly documentation 📚.

The Interesting Technical Bits

What I love about this tool is how it handles different types of files. For instance, it knows that whitespace matters in Python but not so much in JavaScript. It intelligently processes each file type accordingly.

The global ignore patterns are comprehensive - covering everything from Node.js and Python to Java and .NET. It's like having a seasoned developer's knowledge baked right into the tool.

Using AI to Build an AI Tool

Here's where it gets meta - I used AI extensively while building this tool. Claude helped me:

Design the configuration file format
Debug glob pattern matching issues
Optimize the whitespace handling logic
Generate comprehensive ignore lists for different ecosystems

It's fascinating how AI helped me build a tool that helps others use AI more effectively. It's like teaching a teacher to teach better 🎓.

Real-World Impact

The real value comes from how this changes your development workflow. Instead of context-switching between your IDE and AI assistant, trying to remember which files are relevant, you can:

Set up your config once
Generate AI-ready knowledge bases whenever needed
Have focused, context-aware conversations with AI tools

It's like having a really efficient personal assistant who knows exactly which documents you need 📋.

Let's Talk About Your AI Tools

This brings me to an interesting question - what's your team doing with AI tools? Are you building custom solutions? Integrating existing ones? I'd love to hear about it.

Maybe you're:

Building custom GitHub Actions with AI capabilities
Creating AI-powered code review tools
Developing smart documentation generators
Or something entirely different!

Drop me a message, and let's chat about it. Something exciting about developers building tools to help other developers work better with AI is that It's like we're all part of this massive experiment in augmented development 🚀.

The future of development will be fascinating, and tools like these are just the beginning. We're not just coding anymore - we're teaching machines to help us code better.

So, what's your take on AI-assisted development? What tools have you built or dreamed of building? Let's connect and explore how we can push the boundaries of what's possible when humans and AI work together.

After all, the best tools often come from developers scratching their own itch. And in this AI-powered world, that itch might just lead to something revolutionary 💡.