obsidian-second-brain

Your Obsidian vault is dead weight. This skill makes it alive.

25 commands · self-rewriting knowledge base · auto-synthesis · thinking tools that argue with you · 4 scheduled agents · 4 role presets

See it in action · All commands · Install · Presets · Discussions

You use Claude every day. Every session starts from scratch. You re-explain everything. The conversation ends. Everything disappears.

You take notes in Obsidian. Hundreds of files. They just sit there. You make the same decision twice because you forgot you made it six months ago. Ideas rot in daily notes. Nobody connects the dots.

Two powerful tools. Completely disconnected.

After a meeting: /obsidian-save Claude pulls out every decision, person, task, and idea and saves each one to the right note. You do nothing.

You recorded a voice memo: /obsidian-ingest meeting.m4a Claude transcribes it with Whisper, identifies speakers, extracts every promise and action item, and distributes across entity pages, task boards, and the daily note.

You screenshot a whiteboard: /obsidian-ingest photo.png Claude reads the image, extracts text and structure, creates concept notes, links to related projects. A photo becomes knowledge.

You find a great video: /obsidian-ingest https://youtube.com/... Claude doesn't summarize into one note. It REWRITES your existing pages. People get updated. Contradictions get resolved. Patterns trigger new synthesis pages. One URL in. The vault is smarter.

Before a big decision: /obsidian-challenge Claude searches your vault for past failures and reversed decisions on the same topic. Pushes back with your own words. Your vault holds you accountable.

You want to see the big picture: /obsidian-visualize Claude generates a visual canvas of your entire vault. Hub nodes centered, color-coded by type, orphans highlighted. Open it in Obsidian and see the shape of your knowledge.

You go to sleep: The nightly agent runs 5 phases — closes the day, reconciles contradictions, synthesizes cross-source patterns, heals orphan notes, and rebuilds the index. You wake up to a smarter vault.

You start a new day: /obsidian-daily Claude pulls your calendar events, overdue tasks, and overnight changes into today's note. Your morning starts informed.

You never open Obsidian. Everything happens through Claude.

  +------------------------------------------+
  |                                          |
  |   LAYER 1: Operations (20 commands)      |
  |   Claude remembers everything            |
  |                                          |
  +------------------------------------------+
  |                                          |
  |   LAYER 2: Thinking Tools (4 commands)   |
  |   Claude thinks with you                 |
  |                                          |
  +------------------------------------------+
  |                                          |
  |   LAYER 3: Context Engine (1 command)    |
  |   Claude knows who you are               |
  |                                          |
  +------------------------------------------+
  |                                          |
  |   ALWAYS ON                              |
  |   Background agent + 4 scheduled agents  |
  |   Auto-synthesis + save reminders        |
  |                                          |
  +------------------------------------------+

Layer 1 saves, organizes, ingests, reconciles, exports, and maintains your vault. Layer 2 challenges your ideas, surfaces hidden patterns, bridges unrelated domains, and graduates ideas into projects. Layer 3 loads your identity and current state so every session picks up where the last one ended. Always On keeps the vault alive without you lifting a finger.

/obsidian-ingest https://youtube.com/watch?v=example

Traditional vaults are filing cabinets. You put things in. They sit there.

This vault rewrites itself with every input:

• Ingest a source -- existing pages get rewritten, contradictions resolved, patterns synthesized
• Save a conversation -- entities, concepts, and decisions distribute across the vault
• Ask a question -- the Two-Output Rule means every answer also updates pages
• A fact changes -- bi-temporal facts track when it was true AND when the vault learned it. "You believed X on Tuesday. After ingesting Y on Wednesday, you shifted to Z." Full audit trail.
• Do nothing -- background agent and scheduled agents maintain it while you sleep
• Wait a week -- auto-synthesis finds cross-source patterns and writes connection pages

The vault after a week is fundamentally different from the vault you started with.

Pick your role at bootstrap. Each preset creates tailored folder structures, templates, and kanban boards.

python bootstrap_vault.py --path ~/my-vault --name "Your Name" --preset builder

No preset? You get a general-purpose vault that works for everyone.

Background: fires after every context compaction. You keep working. The vault updates itself.

PostCompact -> obsidian-bg-agent.sh -> claude -p (headless) -> vault updated

Scheduled:

Save reminders: Claude nudges you to /obsidian-save after 10+ exchanges or when you say "done" or "thanks". No lost conversations.

Claude is the reader and writer. The vault is a database.

vault/
+-- _CLAUDE.md          # Operating manual
+-- index.md            # Page catalog (Claude reads FIRST)
+-- log.md              # Activity timeline
+-- SOUL.md             # Your identity
+-- CRITICAL_FACTS.md   # ~120 tokens, always loaded (timezone, manager, location)
+-- raw/                # IMMUTABLE source material
+-- wiki/               # Claude's workspace
|   +-- entities/       # People, companies, tools
|   +-- concepts/       # Ideas, frameworks, synthesis
|   +-- projects/       # Project notes
|   +-- daily/          # Daily notes
|   +-- logs/           # Work session logs
|   +-- reviews/        # Weekly/monthly reviews
|   +-- tasks/          # Task notes
|   +-- decisions/      # ADRs
+-- boards/             # Kanban boards
+-- templates/          # Note templates

vault/
+-- Daily/, Projects/, People/, Ideas/, Knowledge/
+-- Dev Logs/, Tasks/, Reviews/, Boards/, Templates/

python bootstrap_vault.py --path ~/my-vault --name "Your Name" --style obsidian

One line:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eugeniughelbur/obsidian-second-brain/main/scripts/quick-install.sh | bash

Or two commands:

git clone https://github.com/eugeniughelbur/obsidian-second-brain ~/.claude/skills/obsidian-second-brain
bash ~/.claude/skills/obsidian-second-brain/scripts/setup.sh "/path/to/your/vault"

Then: /obsidian-init

Most second brain tools make you the janitor.

This skill inverts that. You think, work, and talk. Claude handles the memory. Then it uses that memory to make you think better -- surfacing what you'd miss, challenging what you'd assume, connecting what you'd never link, and synthesizing patterns you didn't ask for.

The vault doesn't grow. It evolves.

Your notes are the moat.

Inspired by Andrey Karpathy's LLM-Wiki.

PRs welcome:

• New thinking tools
• Note type schemas (habits, books, investments)
• MCP integrations (Calendar, Linear, Slack)
• Alternative vault structures
• VS Code / Cursor setup guides

Built by Eugeniu Ghelbur

License