Get started with KB4IT

The quickest way is uv:

uv tool install KB4IT
kb4it --version

The second command prints the version, for example KB4IT X.Y.Z. Other ways to install are in Install KB4IT.

A knowledge base is a folder. KB4IT creates it from a theme, here techdoc:

kb4it create techdoc ~/mykb

You get this layout:

mykb/
├── bin/compile.sh      # builds the site with one command (compile.cmd on Windows)
├── config/repo.json    # title, theme and other settings
├── source/             # your Markdown documents go here
└── target/             # the generated website appears here

Open ~/mykb/config/repo.json and change "title" to the name of your site.

The new knowledge base already has sample documents in source/. Each sample shows how a finished document looks and says which properties it uses. Read one, then copy it or delete it.

Create ~/mykb/source/my-first-document.md with any text editor:

---
Author: Ann Lopez
Category: Procedure
Date: 2026-10-03
Tag: backup
---

# Check last night's backups

## Steps

1. Open the backup report.
2. Check that every job ended with status OK.

The block between the two --- lines holds the document's properties. The # line is its title. Everything else is ordinary Markdown.

kb4it build ~/mykb/config/repo.json

The last lines tell you what happened. The count is three: your document and the two samples.

[WORKFLOW] SUMMARY docs_total=3 compiled=3 skipped=0 invalid=0 ...
[WORKFLOW] URL /home/ann/mykb/target/index.html

xdg-open ~/mykb/target/index.html

Your document is there, and so are pages you did not write: one for the author Ann Lopez, one for the category Procedure, one for the tag backup, a calendar of events and statistics. That is the idea behind KB4IT: properties become navigation.

• Write documents with notes, links, tables and images.
• Rebuild after every change; it is fast because only what changed is rebuilt.
• Prefer menus to commands? Run kb4it alone to open the terminal interface.
• Publish the site when you are ready.