second-brain

Second Brain — the vault every session reads and feeds

A session's context dies when the session ends. A vault of plain markdown files does not. This skill sets up and operates that vault: one folder tree that holds the registry of everything you work on, the conventions for writing it down, and the accumulated lessons that make every future session smarter than the last one.

The machinery is three habits enforced by files:

1. Boot from the brain. Every session starts by reading the vault's own CLAUDE.md — the registry, the rules, the pointers to deeper indexes.
2. Write back before ending. Substantive sessions end with a session log, updated notes, and new learnings. No mental notes; files or it didn't happen.
3. Garden continuously. A recurring pass (see the vault-gardener skill) removes entropy so recall stays precise as the vault grows.

Mode 1: SETUP — bootstrap a new vault

Trigger: "second-brain setup" or any request to create a knowledge vault. Ask only for two things if not evident: where the vault should live ({VAULT}, e.g. ~/Documents/brain — pick a synced folder if the user works across machines) and the user's main work contexts (businesses, clients, or domains — these become the registry rows and #ctx/* tags).

1. Create the structure:

{VAULT}/
├── Projects/          One folder per active project; each gets a Title Case index note
├── Areas/             Ongoing responsibilities with no end date
├── Resources/         Reference material, guides, imported docs
├── Inbox/             Quick capture; the gardener files it later
├── Session-Logs/      One subfolder per project slug
├── Archive/           Completed/inactive items from anywhere above
├── Templates/         Note templates
└── System/
    ├── learnings/     One lesson per file (see extract-approach)
    ├── standards/     Pass/fail quality bars per deliverable type
    └── dashboards/    Optional overview notes

Projects/Areas/Resources/Archive is Tiago Forte's PARA method; Session-Logs and System are our additions — the session memory and the self-improvement machinery respectively.