WeKnora: grounded answers, scoped memory and deliberate operations
Choose WeKnora retrieval, Quick Q&A, Agent or Wiki by the user’s intended outcome
Select the smallest knowledge workflow that answers the task, and choose Lite or team deployment by operating requirements rather than feature count.
What you will learn
- Retrieve passages when composition is not needed
- Use tools and curation for different reasons
- Choose an operating model you can maintain
Before you start
- Basic HTTP and container concepts
- Understanding of documents, passages and model providers
Separate ingestion, retrieval, answer support and memory scope, then design an evidence-based acceptance exercise.
Key takeaways
- Retrieval-only and composed answers serve different consumers.
- Agent tools and Wiki curation solve different problems.
- Choose deployment by operational requirements, not feature count.
Retrieve passages when composition is not needed
Knowledge-search returns structured retrieval results without composing an answer. That is useful when another application will decide how to present evidence, or when a troubleshooter needs to inspect recall directly. Quick Q&A adds answer composition and citation presentation for an end reader.
Use the same test questions when comparing these paths. A generated answer that sounds smoother is not automatically better retrieval. Verify whether both paths found the same required source and whether composition preserved its qualifiers and version boundaries.
Use tools and curation for different reasons
Agent mode is appropriate when a task genuinely needs multi-step reasoning or approved tools. Wiki Mode instead produces maintained, editable knowledge pages with revisions. Neither should be enabled merely to make a simple lookup look more sophisticated. Additional tool authority and maintenance work create additional review obligations.
Personal memory is a separate overlay for the caller’s context, not a substitute for a shared source of truth. A team policy should live in an appropriately governed knowledge source; a remembered preference should not silently become policy for every reader.
Choose an operating model you can maintain
Lite’s SQLite and in-memory coordination reduce external infrastructure, while standard deployment supports a different server-oriented stack. Development mode exposes infrastructure for local processes and is not a production hardening recipe. Evaluate backup, access control, concurrent use and required integrations before selecting.
This is a decision framework derived from the project’s own documentation, not a competitive benchmark or a claim that one mode wins on every workload. Validate the chosen path on the synthetic acceptance set before importing important knowledge or broadening access.
Decision guide
| Criterion | Option A | Option B |
|---|---|---|
| Best when | You need predictable behavior and easy auditing | You need adaptive optimization and have reliable telemetry |
| Main risk | May leave performance on the table | Can become difficult to explain or debug |
Implementation steps
- 1
Identify the end user’s desired artifact.
- 2
Choose retrieval, answer, tool work or curation.
- 3
Keep personal context separate from shared policy.
- 4
Validate the matching deployment and acceptance set.
Copy-ready example
{
"selectionExample": true,
"outcome": "inspect recalled passages",
"chosenPath": "knowledge-search",
"agentToolsNeeded": false,
"wikiMaintenanceNeeded": false,
"comparisonBenchmarkExecuted": false
}Frequently asked questions
Must every question run an agent loop?
No. Retrieval-only or Quick Q&A can fit a bounded lookup.
Is Lite simply standard deployment with a different theme?
No. The documentation describes different storage and coordination infrastructure.
Sources
- WeKnora / README.mdSource checked 2026-09-14
- WeKnora / website-docs/01-getting-started/03-quickstart.mdSource checked 2026-09-14
- WeKnora / website-docs/01-getting-started/02-installation.mdSource checked 2026-09-14
- WeKnora / website-docs/03-features/23-memory.mdSource checked 2026-09-14