Welcome

The Retrieval Development Kit — documentation.

RDK is the Retrieval Development Kit — a distributed knowledge network that lets AI agents query your indexed knowledge before falling back to expensive LLM calls.

You install it once globally, run rdk init, and connect it to Claude Desktop. From that point on, Claude can search your private chunks and the public RDK network to answer questions with real context instead of hallucinated detail.

Three states to understand

• LOCAL — files in your vault (Obsidian, filesystem, Logseq, Notion). You edit these directly. They live on your machine.
• PRIVATE— chunks indexed from your vault, encrypted on the network. Searchable by you and team members you've granted access.
• PUBLIC— chunks you've chosen to share publicly. Plaintext on the network. Earn USDC tips when other agents retrieve them.

Read these first

• Install — Homebrew, curl, or npm
• Getting started — your first rdk init
• Local, Private, Public — what's where, and why
• How tips work — earning USDC on the network
• Glossary — quick-reference term definitions