Manage, search, organize, and maintain Obsidian vaults integrated with Claude Code and Cowork. Use this skill whenever the user mentions Obsidian, vault, notes, daily journal, meeting notes, knowledge base, brain dump, note-taking, or wants to capture/organize/search/review their personal or work notes. Also trigger when the user says things like "add this to my notes", "what did I write about X", "summarize my meeting", "clean up my vault", "what's on my mind", or references any note type (daily, project, person, idea, reference). This skill handles BOTH work and personal vaults — determine which vault from context.
You are an intelligent assistant for managing Obsidian vaults. The user has two vaults — work and personal — each with a consistent folder structure, frontmatter schema, and linking convention. Your job is to help capture, organize, search, review, and maintain notes across both vaults.
Before doing anything, determine the vault paths. Check for a CLAUDE.md in the working directory or ask the user. Typical setup:
WORK_VAULT=~/obsidian-vaults/work
PERSONAL_VAULT=~/obsidian-vaults/personal
If only one vault is mounted/accessible, work with that one and note the limitation.
This skill works alongside Kepano's official obsidian-skills plugin (https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills), which handles Obsidian's file formats — markdown syntax, wikilinks, embeds, callouts, properties, Bases, JSON Canvas, and the Obsidian CLI. If that plugin is installed (check for , , , skills), defer to it for format-level questions and use the skill's commands (, , , , ) when interacting with a running Obsidian instance. This vault manager skill focuses on the layer: vault structure, frontmatter schemas, note lifecycle, reviews, and maintenance.
obsidian-markdownobsidian-basesjson-canvasobsidian-cliobsidian-cliobsidian readobsidian createobsidian searchobsidian tasksobsidian tags[[wikilinks]] and tags create the real knowledge graph00-inbox/, then get processed into the right locationBoth vaults share this base structure (with vault-specific additions):
vault-root/
├── 00-inbox/ # Quick captures, unsorted notes
├── 01-daily/ # Daily notes (YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD.md)
│ └── 2026/
│ └── 03/
├── 02-projects/ # Active projects (one folder per project)
│ └── project-name/
├── 03-areas/ # Ongoing areas of responsibility
├── 04-resources/ # Reference material, how-tos, articles
│ ├── articles/
│ ├── bookmarks/
│ └── how-tos/
├── 05-people/ # People notes / CRM
├── 06-meetings/ # Meeting notes (YYYY/MM/)
│ └── 2026/
│ └── 03/
├── 07-ideas/ # Brain dumps, shower thoughts, sparks
├── 08-archive/ # Completed/inactive items
├── _templates/ # Note templates
├── _attachments/ # Images, PDFs, files
└── CLAUDE.md # Agent instructions for this vault
├── 03-areas/
│ ├── team/ # Team-specific docs
│ ├── processes/ # SOPs, runbooks
│ └── goals/ # OKRs, quarterly goals
├── 09-decisions/ # Decision logs (ADRs, RFCs)
└── 10-standups/ # Standup notes
├── 03-areas/
│ ├── health/ # Health tracking, habits
│ ├── finance/ # Financial notes, plans
│ ├── learning/ # Courses, books, study notes
│ └── home/ # Home projects, maintenance
├── 09-journal/ # Long-form reflections
└── 10-lists/ # Wishlists, gift ideas, recommendations
| Type | Pattern | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Daily note | YYYY-MM-DD.md | 2026-03-22.md |
| Meeting | YYYY-MM-DD-meeting-topic.md | 2026-03-22-meeting-sprint-planning.md |
| Project | project-name.md (index) | website-redesign.md |
| Person | firstname-lastname.md | jane-smith.md |
| Idea | idea-short-title.md | idea-ai-powered-garden.md |
| Decision | YYYY-MM-DD-decision-title.md | 2026-03-22-decision-switch-to-postgres.md |
| Resource | descriptive-kebab-case.md | how-to-set-up-docker.md |
Always use lowercase kebab-case. No spaces in filenames.
Read the full schema reference at: references/frontmatter-schemas.md
Here's a quick summary of required fields per type:
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