Vault Stubs

Work-namespace Stub Management

When to Use This Skill

A work-namespace subtree (a directory such as work/z/) is a knowledge base that mirrors select Zettelkasten notes as tiny redirect stubs. Content lives in Zettelkasten/; the work-namespace subtree points to it so work-context queries still find the topic.

Canonical Redirect Stub Format

---
tags: [redirect]
context: work
---
See [[Zettelkasten/Docker|Docker]] in the main knowledge base.

Properties:

• Size ≤ 200 bytes (whitespace excluded)
• Tags is exactly [redirect]
• Body is a single wikilink with alias to the canonical note
• context: work

Classifications (from vault-agent's stubs analyzer)

Consolidation: stale_duplicate → clean_redirect

When a work/z/Foo.md has substantive content AND Zettelkasten/Foo.md exists, you must decide:

1. Is the work-namespace content a subset of Zettelkasten? → Replace stub with canonical redirect. No content merge needed.
2. Does the work-namespace note have unique content? → Merge the unique sections into Zettelkasten/Foo.md first, then replace stub.
3. Is the work-namespace note better than Zettelkasten? → Rare, but flag for user review. The user decides which becomes canonical.

Merge Heuristic

Compare by section. If a heading in work/z/Foo.md has text that doesn't appear in Zettelkasten/Foo.md, that text needs migration. Use word-level comparison, not exact match — minor wording differences don't count as "unique content."

When in doubt, flag for user review rather than auto-merging. A bad merge is worse than leaving a duplicate.

Conversion Recipe

Replace the whole work-namespace file body:

---
tags: [redirect]
context: work
---
See [[Zettelkasten/Foo|Foo]] in the main knowledge base.

Commit message:

refactor(stubs): convert work/z/Foo.md to redirect (content merged into Zettelkasten)

Promoting ns_original → Zettelkasten

Occasionally a file classified ns_original is actually general-interest content that belongs in Zettelkasten/. Signs:

• No work-specific references (internal check-ins, internal tools, internal URLs)
• Could be useful in personal contexts

If promoting:

1. Move file to Zettelkasten/Foo.md
2. Create a work/z/Foo.md redirect stub in its place
3. Strip context: work from the promoted note's frontmatter
4. Commit as refactor(stubs): promote Foo from work/z to Zettelkasten

Don't promote aggressively — the work namespace exists for a reason.

Detection

# All work-namespace files ordered by size
fd -e md . work/z -x wc -c {} | sort -n

# Ones with `redirect` tag
rg -l '^tags:.*\bredirect\b' work/z/ --glob '*.md'

# Large ones without `redirect` tag (candidates for conversion)
rg -L -l '^tags:.*\bredirect\b' work/z/ --glob '*.md'

Vault-agent's analyze_stubs gives the full classification.

Offline Fallback (App Closed)

The detection methodology above is unchanged — only the data source changes when Obsidian (and its obsidian CLI / live link index) is closed. The obsidian CLI and vault-agent analyzers are the live-index path; parsing the .md corpus directly with the fd/rg Detection snippet above is the deterministic headless default, and for batch/scheduled audits it is often the better choice (reproducible, free of app/index state). vault-frontmatter already operates this way.

Parse the corpus directly:

• Frontmatter — read each note's YAML block between the leading --- fences; extract tags, aliases, context. See vault-frontmatter for YAML-block mechanics.
• Wikilinks — match [[Target]], [[Target|Alias]], [[Target#Heading]], [[folder/Target]], and ![[embed]]. Resolve each target to a note by basename, then relative path, then alias (from frontmatter), all case-insensitive. Resolve ![[embed]] against attachments as well as notes — the attachment folder is per-vault configurable, so read it from .obsidian/app.json (attachmentFolderPath) and fall back to the vault root / Files/ only when that key is unset.

Classify each stub from parsed inputs only: file size (wc -c), the redirect frontmatter tag, and a basename match against Zettelkasten/ — the same inputs analyze_stubs uses. The redirect body's [[Zettelkasten/Foo|Foo]] target is verified with the resolution cascade above.

Safety

• Never delete content without verifying it exists elsewhere. When merging, grep the destination note for a canonical phrase from the source.
• Preserve context: work on stubs (required for work-namespace queries).
• Don't create stubs for Zettelkasten notes that aren't actually used in work context — that creates noise, not redirection.

Related Skills

• vault-frontmatter — YAML mechanics for adding the redirect tag
• vault-wikilinks — pipe-alias syntax for the redirect link
• vault-tags — redirect tag is an exception to the emoji-prefix rule