Using Guides

Context documents for AI agents

What are Guides?

Guides are markdown documents that help AI agents understand your knowledge base. They're especially useful when connecting external agents like Claude Code via MCP.

Why Use Guides?

When an AI connects to RA-H, it has access to tools but lacks context about:

  • How your knowledge base is organized
  • What your dimensions mean
  • Your conventions for creating nodes
  • Patterns you follow

Guides provide this context.

Built-in Guides

RA-H comes with several guides:

GuidePurpose
connectHow to find and create connections
integrateDeep analysis patterns
prepPreparing content for ingestion
researchResearch workflow patterns
surveyDiscovery and exploration

Viewing Guides

Via the Guides Pane

  1. Click the Guides icon in the left toolbar
  2. Browse the list of guides
  3. Click to read any guide

Via Settings

  1. Open Settings (gear icon)
  2. Click the "Guides" tab
  3. View and manage all guides

Creating Custom Guides

Format

Guides use markdown with optional YAML frontmatter:

---
description: Brief description for the list
---

# Guide Title

Your instructions here...

## Sections

Break into clear sections...

Creating in UI

  1. Open Settings → Guides
  2. Click "New Guide"
  3. Enter name (lowercase, no spaces)
  4. Write your content
  5. Save

What to Include

Good guides explain:

  • Purpose — What this guide helps with
  • Patterns — Specific conventions to follow
  • Examples — Concrete examples of good output
  • Warnings — Things to avoid

Using Guides with MCP

External agents can use guide tools:

rah_list_guides()           // List all guides
rah_read_guide("connect")   // Read a specific guide
rah_write_guide("custom", "# Content...")  // Create/update

This lets Claude Code (and other agents) understand your knowledge base before taking actions.

Next Steps

→ Connect External Agents — Set up Claude Code with MCP → Tools Reference — Full list of available tools