What if you could query 500+ scholarly works on human nature, cultural evolution, and ethics in seconds? DrAA (Doctor of Applied Anthropology) is an AI expert built on 777,000+ document segments from leading thinkers including David Graeber, Robert Sapolsky, Christopher Boehm, Stephen Batchelor, and Richard Wrangham. It provides evidence-based insights into secular dharma, evolutionary anthropology, and the science of human behavior.

Query DrAA directly at wah.id with no installation required.

For programmatic access, install yatti-api:

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/Open-Technology-Foundation/yatti-api.git
cd yatti-api && ./install.sh

# Configure your API key (contact admin@yatti.id to request access)
yatti-api configure

# Query DrAA
yatti-api query appliedanthropology "What distinguishes secular dharma from religious dharma?"

See the yatti-api repository for prerequisites and detailed documentation.

Query: "What distinguishes secular dharma from religious dharma?"

Response:

Key distinctions:

• Non-metaphysical frame: Secular dharma brackets claims like rebirth, karmic law as cosmic justice, other realms, and final nirvana; it grounds practice in this life, here-and-now experience, and evidence (Batchelor; Bodhi College materials).

• Tasks over truths: Recasts the Four Noble Truths as four practical tasks--embrace dukkha, let go of reactivity, behold its ceasing, cultivate an integrated ethical life--rather than assent to doctrinal truth-claims.

• Human-centered and contextual: Oriented to human flourishing in specific societies, adapting teachings to contemporary issues (AI, climate, social justice) using psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary anthropology.

• Inclusivity and pluralism: Open to people of any or no religion; acknowledges many dharmas, not one "The Dharma," and invites personal interpretation and local adaptation.

• Practice-first pragmatism: Emphasizes mindfulness, ethical action, and civic responsibility as verifiable skills and social practices, not ritual or hierarchy as gatekeepers.

• Non-authoritarian ethos: Minimizes reliance on sacred canons, priestly authority, or ritual orthodoxy; legitimizes claims via critical inquiry, shared practice, and publicly checkable outcomes.

• Dialogue with science: Integrates empirical research on mind and behavior; treats dharma as an evolving cultural technology rather than a revealed cosmology.

In short: religious dharma orients around metaphysical truths and soteriological ends; secular dharma orients around practical tasks for ethical flourishing in this world, updated by critical inquiry and science.

DrAA (Doctor of Applied Anthropology) is a specialized AI expert system trained on a curated corpus of scholarly works spanning evolutionary biology, cultural anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and secular dharma studies.

• Secular Dharma Studies: Evidence-based exploration of ethical pathways, cultural evolution, and moral frameworks without metaphysical commitments
• Applied Anthropology: Human behavioral evolution, cultural sociology, and biological anthropology with practical applications
• Evolutionary Biology: Human nature, behavioral genetics, cooperation dynamics, and group social organization
• Cross-Disciplinary Synthesis: Philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, cultural studies, and consciousness research
• Comparative Ethics: Religious vs. secular approaches to human organization, cooperation, and ethical living

The knowledgebase draws from 500+ works by leading scholars:

Plus 100+ additional scholars across anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and related fields.

Graduate students, faculty, and postdocs in anthropology, evolutionary biology, philosophy, religious studies, and psychology seeking scholarly synthesis and literature discovery.

Secular Buddhists, humanists, and contemplative practice communities looking for evidence-based approaches to mindfulness and ethical living.

Policy researchers, educators, and mental health professionals integrating anthropological insights into their work.

AI researchers and data scientists exploring human behavioral patterns, cooperation dynamics, and cultural evolution.

Science writers and communicators covering human evolution, ethics, and the intersection of ancient wisdom with modern science.

The knowledgebase operates with specific definitions that distinguish it from traditional approaches:

dharma: A way, path, culture, or outlook adopted by individuals or groups that defines ethical living within their specific environmental and cultural context. Not a universal "The Dharma" but diverse, adaptive ethical systems.

dharmas: Multiple, pluralistic forms that evolve and adapt to specific contexts and environments. Secular dharmas are equally valid and scientifically grounded as religious interpretations.

dharmic: (noun) A person who adheres to a dharma; (adjective) Exhibiting qualities characteristic of an ethical path or way of being.

applied anthropology: Biology-grounded understanding of human culture, behavior, and social organization with direct practical applications to contemporary challenges.

yatti-api query appliedanthropology "What do evolutionary anthropologists say about the origins of human cooperation?"
yatti-api query appliedanthropology "Compare Graeber and Boehm on hierarchy and egalitarianism"
yatti-api query appliedanthropology "How do cultural and biological evolution interact in ethical systems?"

yatti-api query appliedanthropology "What are the evolutionary origins of human ethical behavior?"
yatti-api query appliedanthropology "Compare Buddhist and secular humanist ethical frameworks"
yatti-api query appliedanthropology "How do dharmas emerge and adapt to environmental pressures?"

yatti-api query appliedanthropology "What can anthropology teach us about sustainable social organization?"
yatti-api query appliedanthropology "How can secular dharma principles inform contemporary social policy?"

# Return source segments without AI synthesis
yatti-api query appliedanthropology "dharma" --context-only

• Document Segments: 777,553 segments from 500+ scholarly works
• Database: 2.2GB SQLite with full-text indexing
• Vector Index: 7.9GB FAISS index with 1024-dimensional embeddings
• AI Citations: 15,143 contextual citations generated by AI
• Text Cache: 94 processed directories from diverse academic sources

• Knowledgebase Framework: CustomKB with Python backend
• Embeddings: OpenAI text-embedding-3-large (1024 dimensions)
• Query Model: GPT-5 with specialized anthropology expertise
• Vector Search: FAISS semantic search with cross-encoder reranking
• Search Enhancement: Spelling correction and semantic expansion

• Query Processing: Context-only queries complete in ~11-13 seconds
• Temperature: 0.2335 for consistent, objective responses
• Context Window: 30 relevant segments with 5-segment scope
• Query Cache: 30-day TTL for repeated queries
• API Concurrency: 12-24 concurrent requests

For contributors and developers who want to work with the knowledgebase directly.

appliedanthropology/
├── appliedanthropology.cfg               # Main configuration
├── appliedanthropology.db                # SQLite database (777K+ segments)
├── appliedanthropology.faiss             # Vector search index (7.9GB)
├── appliedanthropology_primary_prompt.md # AI assistant personality
├── appliedanthropology.build.conf        # Build configuration
├── build.sh                              # Symlink to build/build.sh
├── build/                                # Build scripts and utilities
│   ├── build.sh                          # Main build orchestrator
│   ├── version.sh                        # Version tracking
│   ├── create_staging.text.sh            # Text preprocessing
│   └── staging.text.zip                  # Cached text data
├── docs/                                 # Documentation
├── logs/                                 # Application logs
└── staging.text/                         # Processed text cache

The knowledgebase uses a 6-stage build process:

# Full rebuild (all stages)
./build.sh -a -y

# Individual stages
./build.sh -0    # Create text cache from source data
./build.sh -1    # Generate AI citations (GPT-4.1-mini)
./build.sh -2    # Append citations to database
./build.sh -3    # Import text to database
./build.sh -4    # Create vector embeddings
./build.sh -5    # Run test query

# Interactive query mode
customkb query appliedanthropology.cfg

# Direct query
customkb query appliedanthropology.cfg "What is dharma in secular context?"

# Context-only (no AI response)
customkb query appliedanthropology.cfg "dharma" --context-only

# Check segment count
sqlite3 appliedanthropology.db "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM docs;"

# Check citation count
sqlite3 appliedanthropology.db "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM citations;"

# Verify indexes
customkb verify-indexes appliedanthropology.cfg

# Optimize performance
customkb optimize appliedanthropology.cfg

# Version management
./build/version.sh show      # Display current version
./build/version.sh bump      # Increment version
./build/version.sh history   # Show version history

1. Add source materials to the symlinked embed_data directory
2. Run ./build.sh -0 to update text cache
3. Complete rebuild with ./build.sh -1 -2 -3 -4 or full ./build.sh -a

• appliedanthropology.cfg: System parameters, API settings, search configuration
• appliedanthropology.build.conf: Build pipeline settings, citation model parameters
• appliedanthropology_primary_prompt.md: AI assistant personality and response guidelines

• CPU: Multi-core processor for FAISS operations
• Memory: Minimum 16GB RAM (32GB recommended)
• Storage: 12GB+ available space
• Software: CustomKB framework, Python 3.x, SQLite, FAISS, OpenAI API access

Last Updated: July 2025

• prosocial.world: Prosocial behavior and social evolution
• wayang.net: Indonesian wayang culture and traditional arts
• seculardharma: Secular Buddhist philosophy and mindfulness

• Shared caching infrastructure across the vectordbs ecosystem
• Cross-referencing capabilities with other anthropological resources
• Query caching with 30-day TTL for performance optimization

Areas for contribution:

• Additional source material for inclusion in the dataset
• Enhanced search algorithms and relevance tuning
• Cross-cultural wisdom tradition integrations
• Performance optimizations and caching improvements
• New analytical frameworks and methodological approaches

The Applied Anthropology Knowledgebase bridges ancient wisdom traditions with contemporary scientific understanding, providing rigorous academic frameworks grounded in peer-reviewed research for the growing global community seeking evidence-based approaches to ethics, meaning-making, and human flourishing.