obsidian

Obsidian vault

The user keeps a personal Obsidian vault as plain markdown files synced via iCloud. The vault is just a directory tree, so all standard Unix tools work — no Obsidian app required to read or write notes.

Where it lives

/Users/fredrik/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/work

Because the path contains spaces and tildes, always quote it in shell commands. A useful shorthand is to assign it once per session:

VAULT="/Users/fredrik/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/work"

If $VAULT doesn't exist (e.g. on a non-mac host or before iCloud has synced), stop and tell the user — don't fabricate notes.

How the user normally interacts with it

The user edits the vault from Neovim via the obsidian.nvim plugin. Configuration (workspace path, daily-notes folder, template settings, keymaps) lives in nvim-fredrik/plugin/obsidian.lua in this dotfiles repo — read it when you need the current setup, since it changes occasionally and this skill should not duplicate it.

When suggesting a workflow, prefer pointing the user at the relevant keymap or :Obsidian command (look them up in that file) over spawning a shell command, unless they're clearly outside Neovim.

Folder layout

$VAULT/
├── Daily/                  # Daily notes, one file per day: YYYY-MM-DD.md
├── Meeting notes/          # Meeting notes (template: meeting_notes.md)
├── Resources/              # PARA-style references (Go/, Postgres/, Neovim/, ...)
├── Ideas/                  # Half-baked ideas
├── Archive/                # Things no longer active
├── Clippings/              # Web clippings
├── _templates/             # Frontmatter templates (daily.md, meeting_notes.md)
├── _excalidraw/            # Excalidraw drawings
├── .trash/                 # Obsidian's soft-delete bin (treat as deleted)
└── *.md                    # A handful of loose top-level notes
                            # (scratchpad.md, Running.md, LEARNING.md, blog drafts)