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/personal

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/personal"

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├── Archive/                # Things no longer active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)

Underscored folders (_templates, _excalidraw) sort to the top in the Obsidian UI — they're conventions, not hidden files. Skip .trash/ when searching unless the user explicitly asks about deleted notes.

Note conventions

Filenames

• Daily notes: Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md (e.g. Daily/2026-05-08.md).
• Other new notes created via the Neovim plugin are prefixed with today's date: YYYY-MM-DD-<title>.md. Match this pattern when creating notes programmatically.
• Filenames may contain spaces (API design.md) and emoji (🧚‍♀️ LEARNING.md).

Frontmatter

Every note has YAML frontmatter. Minimum shape:

---
id: <usually filename without .md>
aliases: []
tags: []
categories: []
---

Daily notes also include date: YYYY-MM-DD and tags: [daily-notes]. Meeting notes include company: "[[Einride]]" and date. When creating a new note, copy the relevant template from _templates/ rather than hand-rolling frontmatter.

Links

Notes use Obsidian wikilinks in shortest form:

• [[API design]] — link by note title (no path, no .md)
• [[API design|how we design APIs]] — with display text
• [[API design#Choose level of abstraction]] — link to a heading

Standard markdown links ([text](path.md)) are not used — preserve wikilink style when editing.

Finding things (portable, no Obsidian needed)

Prefer rg and fd; fall back to grep/find if those aren't installed. Always exclude .obsidian/ and .trash/ to keep results signal-rich.

# Find notes by filename (case-insensitive, fuzzy on basename)
fd -tf 'pattern' "$VAULT" -E .obsidian -E .trash

# Full-text search across notes, with filename + line context
rg --type md -n 'search term' "$VAULT" -g '!.obsidian' -g '!.trash'

# Find all notes tagged X (frontmatter or inline #tag)
rg --type md -n '(^|\s)#X\b|tags:.*\bX\b' "$VAULT" -g '!.obsidian' -g '!.trash'

# Find backlinks to a note titled "API design"
rg --type md -n '\[\[API design(\||#|\]\])' "$VAULT" -g '!.obsidian' -g '!.trash'

# Today's daily note (create-if-missing pattern)
TODAY="$VAULT/Daily/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md"

For broader exploration (e.g. "what notes do I have about Postgres?"), look at both filenames and full-text — the user organizes by both folder and tag.

Creating notes

When the user asks you to add a note, follow these rules:

1. Pick the right folder based on intent: daily entry → Daily/, meeting → Meeting notes/, work topic → Einride/<area>/, durable reference → Resources/<topic>/, half-formed thought → Ideas/ or append to scratchpad.md.
2. Use the matching template from _templates/ as the starting point. Replace {{date}} with YYYY-MM-DD and {{title}} with the note's title.
3. Set id to the filename without .md (the Neovim plugin uses YYYY-MM-DD-<title> for non-daily notes — match that for consistency).
4. Use wikilinks for any cross-references, not markdown links.

If unsure which folder fits, ask — folder choice is how the user finds things later.

Editing notes

• Preserve existing frontmatter exactly; only add fields that are missing.
• Don't rewrite id even if the filename suggests a different one (it may be a deliberate alias).
• Keep the wikilink style — if the user wrote [[Foo]], don't "improve" it to [Foo](Foo.md).

Plugins worth knowing about

The vault has two community plugins enabled (see .obsidian/community-plugins.json):

• frontmatter-generator — auto-fills frontmatter on note creation in the Obsidian app. Notes created from the shell won't go through it, so copy from _templates/ to get equivalent output.
• obsidian-excalidraw-plugin — drawings live in _excalidraw/ as .excalidraw.md files. Treat them as opaque unless the user asks specifically.