Give your AI a second brain.

Your AI is clever enough. What it doesn’t have is you: your business, your decisions, what happened last week. So you explain it again, every time.

Obsidian is a notes app that sits on top of an ordinary folder. Every note is a plain text file on your own computer. Point your AI at that folder and it can look things up before it answers.

• Plain textNo lock-in. If the app disappeared, your notes wouldn’t.
• InstantLocal files read in milliseconds, so checking five notes costs nothing.
• One source of truthEvery project reads the same notes. Update once.
• Linked[[Links]] between notes let the AI follow a thread the way you would.

The folders are the easy part. What makes it work is what sits on top of them.

1. 04RoutinesScheduled jobs that write the brief and keep things tidy.
2. 03SearchThree ways to find anything, used in a fixed order.
3. 02OrientationFour short files a new session reads first.
4. 01The vaultA folder of plain notes. Where everything lives.

Eight folders cover almost everything. The names matter less than keeping them consistent.

• AreasOne per business or role, each with its _context/ docs
• Daily logsOne note a day. The brief lands here
• ProjectsOne file per project, plus _active.md
• KnowledgeYour processed thinking: books, people, themes
• Meeting NotesSummaries and transcripts, synced in
• NotesEvergreen how-tos and reference
• SourcesRaw clippings. Read-only
• _SystemOrientation files, routines, templates

A new session gets its bearings from four short files: who you are, where things live, what it can do, and what’s happening now.

Give an AI one search tool and it reads everything. Give it three and a rule about which comes first, and it finds things fast.

1. 1Obsidian CLIStructure“What links to this project?”
2. 2grepExact words“Find ‘invoice 2231’.”
3. 3Semantic searchMeaning“Have I written about pricing before?”

A few scheduled routines turn the folder into something that runs. Each one is just a note describing a job, so it goes wherever you go.

Once an AI writes in your notes, you can lose track of which thinking is yours. A one-word label on every note fixes that.

• source: meYour own thinking
• source: aiWritten by the AI
• source: ai-summaryAI summary of a meeting
• source: transcriptWord-for-word capture

• It never edits your words, only adds tags and links.
• Clipped articles are read-only.
• Every change it makes is logged.

If a client gives you an AI account they manage, their admins can see what it reads. Their data may also include other people’s personal details. So keep it separate: one status line crosses over, nothing else.

1. 01

   Read your calendar through the operating system

   Scripting the calendar app is painfully slow and returns the wrong dates. The system’s own calendar framework is instant and correct.

2. 02

   A 7am job needs a laptop that’s awake

   Schedule a wake-up just before, stop it running twice, and catch up if it missed.

3. 03

   Let every routine fail gracefully

   Put a timeout on everything. A slow email check should shorten the brief, not kill it.

4. 04

   Search can break silently

   Update your tools and semantic search can stop working without an error. Check it after every upgrade.

5. 05

   Close every session

   If _active.md goes stale, every new session starts cold again. It takes thirty seconds.

This setup grew over months. Build it in stages and use each piece before adding the next.

1. 1Day oneThe folders, one _context doc, me.md, and the global config.
2. 2Week oneThe Vault Map, the search ladder, and a three-line daily note.
3. 3Week twoThe morning brief. Make it reliable before adding anything.
4. 4Month oneWeekly review, health check, night shift, source labels.

You’ll know it’s working when you stop explaining background before asking for things.