FEE-86 add user guide on creating a personal knowledge base in Roam

[KarolaKirsanow]

This PR adds a roam/use case doc to the website on building and utilizing a personal knowledge base

[vercel]

@KarolaKirsanow is attempting to deploy a commit to the Discourse Graphs Team on Vercel.

A member of the Team first needs to authorize it.

[graphite-app]

PR size/scope check

This PR is over our review-size guideline.

• Recommended: ~200 lines changed
• Acceptable limit: up to 400 lines when well-scoped/self-contained
• Preferred file count: fewer than 5 files

Please split this into smaller PRs unless there is a clear reason the changes need to land together.

If keeping it as one PR, please add a brief justification covering:

• What single problem this PR solves
• Why the files/changes are coupled

[devin-ai-integration]

🔍 Devin Review: 3 flags

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[KarolaKirsanow]

I'd appreciate a content review/suggestions from @mattakamatsu , @joelchan or @jsmorabito as I'm promulgating suggested practice.

[jsmorabito]

Content-wise this looks solid to me! The gifs and images are especially useful. I'd say this is good to go and we can continue to polish as we figure out best practices for this kind of documentation

[mattakamatsu]

This is like the missing artifact to guide people into DG usage! 🥳

Adding [[wiki-links]] to key terms keeps your new node in conversation with the rest of your vault as you build your graph. This helps you find appropriate discourse relations later.

this distracted me a bit from the main DGification thread, as it's more Roam/obsidian than DG

The discourse graph plugin includes its own native search tool,

here I read "native" as "Roam's native tooling" so maybe a red herring

The admin panel, reached from the discourse graph plugin Settings menu

That search test screen shot is COOL looking, but is it more of a diagnostic than a user-facing feature?

Everything else looks excellent

[KarolaKirsanow]

This is like the missing artifact to guide people into DG usage! 🥳

Adding [[wiki-links]] to key terms keeps your new node in conversation with the rest of your vault as you build your graph. This helps you find appropriate discourse relations later.

this distracted me a bit from the main DGification thread, as it's more Roam/obsidian than DG

Hooo, that might be because I made an incorrect reference to a "vault" in this Roam doc. Removed.
These use-case docs are mirrored for Roam & Obsidian rather than being tool-agnostic like the fundamentals docs. The assumed reader here is someone who already has a Roam graph and is transitioning to add discourse nodes, but doesn't want to lose the connection to the rest of his graph.

The discourse graph plugin includes its own native search tool,

here I read "native" as "Roam's native tooling" so maybe a red herring

edited to remove "native"

The admin panel, reached from the discourse graph plugin Settings menu

That search test screen shot is COOL looking, but is it more of a diagnostic than a user-facing feature? Everything else looks excellent

removed search test img & caption

[jsmorabito]

@mdroidian Was getting ready to merge this, but ran into a hiccup that looks to be out of my range. Please take a look at Claude's comment below and let me know how is best to proceed:

PR #1372 is Karola’s Roam personal-knowledge-base guide. It’s reviewed and ready except for the Vercel check, which fails with “Authorization required to deploy”. The PR comes from her fork (KarolaKirsanow/discourse-graph), and Vercel won’t build fork commits until a Discourse Graphs team member authorizes them. The authorize link is on the Vercel bot comment on the PR.

Could you either authorize the deploy, or tell me if it’s fine to merge without a Vercel preview? This is a docs-only change: one new .mdx page plus its images. Lint, validate, format, CodeRabbit and Graphite all pass.

There’s also a second issue to check. The “PR - Roam To Blob Storage” workflow failed on this PR’s earlier pushes (Sep 15). I don’t see it in the latest check list. It may also need fork approval or missing secrets. Is it required for a docs-only PR?

[mdroidian]

RE: Vercel
This is related to cloning the repo locally and create a PR there, rather than a fork.

That would likely fix the second issue as well.

[vercel]

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated
discourse-graph	Ready	Preview	Oct 9, 2026 6:09pm UTC

[mdroidian]

I've gone ahead an approved this to Vercel, so the preview should happen shortly (but I'm not sure if it will be approved for future commits). You can ignore the "PR - Roam To Blob Storage" for this PR (as it stands now).

[jsmorabito]

@mdroidian thanks for the note about cloning locally. I saved it to Claudes memory to help me address it going forward. Just reviewed Karola and this all looks great! I'm going to merge.