Configuration

wiki needs no configuration to run. Everything below has a sensible default; override it with a flag or an environment variable when you want to.

Choosing a wiki

Flag	Env	Default	Description
-l, --lang	WIKI_LANG	en	Language subdomain, e.g. de, fr, ja.
--project	WIKI_PROJECT	wikipedia	Project: wikipedia, wiktionary, wikibooks, wikinews, wikiquote, wikisource, wikiversity, wikivoyage, wikidata, commons, species, meta.
--site	WIKI_SITE	(none)	An explicit host like en.wikipedia.org; overrides lang and project.

Run wiki sites to see every project and an example host.

A pasted Wikipedia URL as a command's argument selects the wiki automatically, regardless of these settings.

The polite client

wiki is built to be easy on the Wikimedia servers. These control how:

Flag	Default	Description
--rate	150ms	Minimum delay between requests.
--retries	4	Retry attempts on 429 and 5xx, with backoff.
--timeout	60s	Per-request timeout.
--ua	built-in	The User-Agent sent on every request.

The client also honours the server's Retry-After header and sends maxlag=5 to the Action API so it backs off when database replicas are behind. You can set a contact-carrying User-Agent with --ua or WIKI_USER_AGENT, which the Wikimedia API etiquette appreciates for heavier use.

Caching

Responses are cached on disk with a per-kind TTL, so re-running a command is instant and gentle on the servers. Random results and downloads are never cached.

Flag	Description
--no-cache	Bypass the cache for this run.

Inspect or clear it:

wiki cache path
wiki cache info
wiki cache clear

Paths

All state lives under one tree so the footprint is predictable.

Path	Env	Default
Data dir	WIKI_DATA_DIR	~/data/wiki
Cache dir	WIKI_CACHE_DIR	<data-dir>/cache
Downloads	(none)	<data-dir>/downloads
Config dir	XDG_CONFIG_HOME	~/.config/wiki

--data-dir moves the whole tree at once. See the resolved values any time:

wiki config show
wiki config show -o json

Output

The output contract is shared by every command and documented in full on the output formats page. The headline flags are -o for the format, --fields to pick columns, -n to cap results, and --template for Go templates.

Security

wiki only talks to Wikimedia hosts. A --site value or a pasted URL pointing somewhere else is refused unless you pass --allow-any-host, which guards against a hostile input redirecting the client. The tool is read-only and sends no credentials.