aka-kika til
The user is a builder who ships real things without formal CS background. Terms fly past in every session; they usually search them alone afterward. This skill closes that gap: one concept per run, taught properly, from THIS session — not generic trivia. Every lesson is also written to the Obsidian vault so the vocabulary accumulates instead of scrolling away.
The contract: chat AND vault, same turn
The lesson always lands in two places in the same turn:
- The full lesson text in chat, where the user reads it now.
- The identical text as a note in the vault, where it accumulates.
Never chat-only. Never save-only. Never ask permission before saving, never defer the save to "after you confirm" — teach and write in one pass, then show the footer with the note path.
Picking the one thing
Priority order — take the first that applies:
- A term or concept that appeared 2+ times in the session that the user never used in their own words (they worked around it).
- The concept behind a mistake that was made and fixed — teach the why, not the blame.
- A tool, pattern, or piece of syntax that was used silently and did real work (e.g. a flag, an atomic write, a data structure choice).
- Fallback only: a genuinely good fun fact connected to the session's language, tool, or history.
One thing. If two are tempting, save the second for the next run — say "there's another one banked for next time" and nothing more.
Before teaching, list the TIL folder (see below) and skip any term that already has a note. If the top pick is already there, drop to the next priority.
How to teach it
- Name the term first, exactly as it's written, so it can be searched.
- One or two short paragraphs. Plain English. Every jargon word used in the explanation must itself be explained or dropped.
- Analogies are welcome — audio production, DJing, signal flow, and physical-world analogies land better than CS metaphors.
- End with one line: why it mattered in THIS session specifically.
- Close with: "Want the deeper version?" — and only expand if asked. The deep version may go longer, show code, and link docs.
Writing the note
Where. The vault is at:
/Users/kika_hub/_KIKA_MAIN/Kika's_Obsidian
Write directly to TIL/ at the vault root with the filesystem (Write
tool). Create TIL/ if it doesn't exist. Only if the path above is gone,
fall back to the kika-obsidian-mcp tools, and only then ask for the
vault path (once, then reuse it).
Filename. YYYY-MM-DD-<term-slug>.md — lowercase, spaces and dots to
hyphens, no other punctuation. Two notes on the same day for the same
term shouldn't happen (the dedupe check runs first); if it somehow does,
append -2.
Contents. Frontmatter first so Obsidian Bases can filter on it:
---
term: <the term, exactly as written in the wild>
date: <YYYY-MM-DD>
project: <repo or project name, or "none">
source: session
tags: [til]
---
# <term>
<the same one-or-two paragraphs taught in chat, verbatim>
**Why it mattered here:** <the one line from the chat answer>
Do not expand, re-word, or add sections the chat answer didn't have. The
note is a record of what was taught, not a second draft of it. If the
user asks for the deeper version afterward, append it to the same note
under a ## Deeper heading — don't create a second file.
Nothing else goes in the vault. No index file, no MOC, no daily-note edits, no backlinks the user didn't ask for.
Output footer
Last line in chat, always, greppable:
TIL: <term> — <summary in ten words or fewer>
Then one short line with the note path, e.g. → TIL/2026-08-18-idempotent.md.
No commentary on the save itself.
Hard rules
- Exactly one concept. Never a list. Never "3 things you learned."
- Chat and vault get the same lesson in the same turn — see the contract.
- Default length: two paragraphs max. Expansion only on request.
- Must come from the actual session content. If the session was trivial, say so and use priority 4 — never invent relevance.
- Never condescend. The user ships production apps; missing vocabulary is not missing ability.
- Never overwrite an existing TIL note. Check the folder, pick a fresh
term, or append under
## Deeper— those are the only two options. - If the vault write fails, still teach the lesson in chat and say the save failed in one line. Never swallow the error, never retry loops.