Vault Insights

Vault Insights

Audit the shared Obsidian vault at ~/Documents/obsidian-vault/ for internal consistency and latent cross-cutting insights.

What This Skill Does

Reads all notes in the vault and produces two analyses:

1. Inconsistency scan — finds contradictions, broken links, stale sections, and notes that have drifted out of sync
2. Latent insight scan — traverses the wiki-link graph and tag dimensions to surface knowledge that is implicit in the connections between notes but not stated in any individual note

All output is written to the daily note only (YYYY-MM-DD.md), clearly tagged so findings are traceable. The skill must not edit any other note unless the user explicitly instructs it to.

Procedure

Step 1: Read the vault

1. Glob *.md in the vault root to list all notes
2. Read every note (use parallel reads for efficiency)
3. Build a mental model of: tags, wiki-links between notes, key claims/facts, status markers (resolved, superseded, complete, etc.), open questions

Step 2: Inconsistency scan

Check for:

• Contradictions: Note A says X, Note B says Y, where X and Y conflict
• Stale sections: A note's later section resolves/supersedes an earlier section in the same note, but the earlier section wasn't updated
• Broken link targets: A [[wiki-link]] points to a note that is empty or doesn't exist
• Stale PR notes: For any note with the #pr tag or pr- filename prefix, check the PR's current status using gh pr view <number> --json state,mergedAt,closedAt. Flag if the note says "in progress" but the PR is already merged/closed.
• Unresolved propagation: A finding in one note invalidates or changes claims cited in other notes, but those other notes haven't been updated
• Duplicate/overlapping notes: Two notes cover substantially the same content with risk of drift

For each inconsistency found, classify its severity:

Step 3: Latent insight scan

This is where the graph structure earns its keep. Because notes are explicitly linked by wiki-links and tagged along multiple dimensions, you can traverse the graph to surface knowledge that is implicit in the connections but not stated anywhere.

Look for:

• Cross-note implications: Does a finding in note A have consequences for the design/approach described in note B that aren't mentioned in either? Follow the wiki-link chains — a domain note linked to an architecture note linked to a service note may reveal implications that no single note articulates.
• Unconnected solutions: Does a problem described in one note have a solution (or partial solution) already described in another note, without either linking to the other?
• Pattern repetition: Is the same pattern/problem appearing across multiple notes without being recognised as a general principle?
• Gaps: Is there something that logically should exist given the surrounding notes, but doesn't?

For each insight, assign a confidence and immediacy rating:

Step 4: Review recent vault insights for dedup

Before writing, search for recent #vault-insights sections:

Grep: pattern="#vault-insights" path="~/Documents/obsidian-vault" output_mode="files_with_matches"

Read the ## Vault Insights section from the 3 most recent daily notes that contain one. Compare your current findings against previously reported items:

• Resolved: If a previously reported inconsistency has been fixed, note its resolution briefly.
• Unchanged: If previously reported items have not changed, do not repeat them individually. Add a single-line "Unchanged" section with a count and a link to the most recent daily note where they were reported.
• Updated: If a previously reported item has new information, report it in full with a note describing what changed.
• New: Report in full as normal.

Step 5: Write findings to daily note

Append a ## Vault Insights section to today's daily note (YYYY-MM-DD.md). Create the daily note if it doesn't exist (with H1 title and no tags — daily notes are journals, not tagged knowledge).

Use this exact format:

## Vault Insights

#vault-insights

### Inconsistencies

#### [severity: error] Short title
**Notes**: [[note-a]], [[note-b]]
Description of the contradiction and what needs reconciling.

#### [severity: warning] Short title
**Notes**: [[note-a]]
Description of the staleness or drift.

### Latent Insights

#### [confidence: high | immediacy: now] Short title
**Notes**: [[note-a]], [[note-b]]
Description of the insight. Why it matters. What could be done.

### Summary
- X inconsistencies found (N error, N warning, N info)
- Y latent insights found (N high/now, N medium/soon, N low/future)

Constraints

• Read-only except for the daily note. Do not edit, create, or delete any other note in the vault. Report what needs fixing; let the user decide what to act on.
• No codebase reads. This skill audits the vault's internal consistency, not whether notes match the code. (The user can verify against code separately.)
• No hallucinated links. Only reference notes that actually exist in the vault. If a note should exist but doesn't, flag that as a gap, don't create it.
• Be calibrated. Don't inflate severity or confidence. An insight that depends on future work that may never happen is low/future, not high/now.
• Deprioritize sketches. Notes tagged #sketch are speculative designs — they may never be built. Give low priority to findings that only involve sketch notes.
• Use the Explore agent (via Task tool with subagent_type=Explore) to parallelise reading large numbers of notes if the vault has grown significantly.

Usage

/vault-insights        # Run full audit (inconsistencies + insights)

The skill always runs both scans. There is no partial mode — the vault is small enough that a full read is fast, and inconsistencies often inform insights.