Tour

"The fastest way to get something into the vault is staging. Let's try it."

Ask them: "Give me a quick thought, link, or idea — anything you'd normally jot on a sticky note."

Take what they give you and append it to staging/Inbox.md with a timestamp.

"That's the inbox. Anything goes here — half-formed ideas, links, quotes. It gets processed later. You can also paste URLs into staging/To Read Later.md for articles you want to read."

Stop 3: Create a real note

"Let's create an actual note. Pick one of your domains — what's something you know about that topic? Even a simple concept works."

Take their answer and create a proper atomic note:

• Frontmatter with type: atomic, up: pointing to their relevant MOC, appropriate tags
• A few sentences capturing the concept
• Show them the result

"Notice the up: link — that's what connects this note to your MOC. In Obsidian, the Breadcrumbs plugin shows the trail at the top: Home > Resources > [MOC] > [Your Note]."

Then update the MOC to mention the new note (show them both sides of the relationship).

Stop 4: Read an article (if they have a URL)

"Got an article or blog post you've been meaning to read? Give me the URL and I'll show you the reading workflow."

If they have a URL:

• Run the extract_url.py script to show it working
• Explain: "In normal use, you'd run /obsidian-read <url> and it creates a review note (your takeaways) and a literature note (the full text for reference). Both get linked to the right MOC automatically."

If they don't have a URL handy:

• "No worries — whenever you find something worth reading, paste the URL into staging/To Read Later.md or run /obsidian-read <url> directly. It extracts the content, creates structured notes, and files them under the right MOC."

Stop 5: Process the inbox

"Remember what we put in staging? Let's process it."

Run /obsidian-migrate mentally — explain the flow:

1. "The migrate skill looks at everything in staging/"
2. "For each item, it figures out: what type of note is this? Where does it belong? What MOC should it live under?"
3. "Then it creates a proper note with frontmatter, moves it out of staging, and updates the parent MOC"

Actually process the item they added in Stop 2:

• Create a proper note from it (fleeting or atomic depending on content)
• Add frontmatter, link to appropriate MOC
• Remove it from Inbox.md
• "That's the staging → vault flow. Dump first, organize later."

Stop 6: Vault maintenance

"The vault has built-in health checks. Let me show you what they do."

Run the frontmatter validator briefly:

uv run python .claude/skills/obsidian-organize/scripts/validate_frontmatter.py .

Show the output briefly. "This catches things like missing frontmatter, broken links, orphan notes. You can run /vault-audit for a full checkup, or /vault-index to regenerate the census."

Stop 7: The daily workflow (if productivity enabled)

Check if .claude/skills/daily-start/ exists. If so:

"You enabled the productivity module. Here's what a typical day looks like:"

1. Morning: /daily-start — reviews your tasks, checks staging, picks a focus for the day
2. During the day: dump things into staging, create notes, clip URLs
3. End of day: /daily-end — captures what you did, loose threads, sets up tomorrow
4. Friday: /week-close — weekly review, retro, reset for next week
5. Monday: /week-start — reprioritize, plan the week

"You don't have to use all of these. Most people start with just /daily-start and add the rest over time."

If productivity is not enabled: "If you want daily/weekly routines later, run /personalize again and enable the productivity module."

Stop 8: Wrap up

"Here's your cheat sheet:"

"The vault gets better as you use it. MOCs emerge naturally as topics accumulate notes. Don't try to build the perfect structure upfront — just capture, organize, and let connections form."

"Questions about anything?"

Rules

• Reference THEIR actual MOCs and domains, not generic examples
• Keep each stop short — 2-3 minutes max per stop
• Actually do things (create notes, run scripts) — don't just explain
• If they seem eager to try something specific, follow their lead
• If they seem overwhelmed, offer to stop and let them explore on their own
• End each stop with a natural transition: "Ready for the next one?" or "Want to keep going?"