Quick Capture

quick-capture

The fast input path. OB1 prompt-4 gave us five sentence-starter formats; this skill recognizes any of them and lands the note in the right place with the right schema. The user types a single line; the skill picks the surface, builds the frontmatter, writes the body, and confirms.

When to use

• The user wants to capture a decision, person note, insight, meeting summary, or AI-tool save without thinking about folder structure or frontmatter.
• Anytime the user types one of the five recognized formats.
• Inline during a conversation when something durable comes up.

When NOT to use

• Long-form research, multi-source synthesis, deep-dives — those go through Category 1 research skills.
• Fact-claims requiring verification — that's claim-extractor + verify-claim → memory-curator.
• Scheduled-agent output — those use digest-writer directly.

The five formats

Recognition is pattern-based on the leading sentence-starter:

1. Decision

Decision: <what>. Context: <why>. Owner: <who>.

→ vault/decisions/{YYYY-MM-DD}-{slug-of-what}.md → Template: .templates/qc-decision.md → vault-writer.write_decision(title=<what>, status='proposed', decided_on=<today>, deciders=[<who>], body=<context as body>)

The status defaults to proposed; the user can edit to accepted later. Most quick-capture decisions are personal/program-level proposals that get formalized through the ADR process.

2. Person note

[Name] — [what you learned].

→ vault/people/{slug-of-name}.md → Template: .templates/qc-person.md → vault-writer.write_person(handle=<slug-of-name>, name=<name>, ...) — patch mode: if the person already exists (e.g., from voices.csv), append "what you learned" to the body's "What I learned" section, don't overwrite.

3. Insight

Insight: <realization>. Triggered by: <cause>.

→ vault/insights/{slug-of-realization}.md → Template: .templates/qc-insight.md → vault-writer.write_insight(title=<realization>, body=<both, formatted>)

4. Meeting debrief

Meeting with <who> about <topic>. Key points: <points>. Action items: <items>.

→ vault/events/{YYYY-MM-DD}/{slug-of-topic}.md → Template: .templates/qc-meeting.md → vault-writer.write_event(event_date=<today>, event_type='meeting', title=<topic>, body=<both, formatted>, participants=[<who>])

5. AI save

Saving from <tool>: <key takeaway>.

→ vault/insights/{slug-of-takeaway}.md (with tags: [insight, ai-coding-tools]) → Template: .templates/qc-ai-save.md → vault-writer.write_insight(title=<takeaway>, body=<formatted with tool attribution>)

Parsing rules

The skill uses literal sentence-starters as the format trigger (case-insensitive):

• Decision: → format 1
• Insight: → format 3
• Meeting with → format 4
• Saving from → format 5
• Anything else with <Name> — <text> (em-dash or hyphen-em-dash) → format 2

If the input doesn't match any format clearly, stop and ask: "Which capture format did you mean? [decision / person / insight / meeting / ai-save]". Per the stop-and-report guardrail, do not silently misroute.

Slug derivation

For all formats:

• Lowercase the title.
• Replace non-alphanumeric chars with -.
• Collapse repeated -.
• Trim leading/trailing -.
• Cap at 60 chars.
• For decisions, prepend the date: {YYYY-MM-DD}-{slug}.

Idempotency

vault-writer's per-surface idempotency rules apply:

• Decisions: same-date same-slug → error (the user is making a different decision; they should disambiguate).
• People: existing person → merge per write_person rules.
• Insights: existing slug → rewrite body, bump updated.
• Events: append-only, same-day same-slug → suffix -2.

Output to user

After writing, return a one-line confirmation with the vault path:

✓ captured to vault/decisions/2026-06-20-skip-x-polling.md

Plus the [[wikilink]] form so the user can paste it elsewhere: [[2026-06-20-skip-x-polling]].

Composes with

• vault-writer — every write.
• vault-conventions — schema for the target surface.
• The 5 templates at ~/Obsidian/Research-Brain/.templates/qc-*.md.

Acceptance test (for step 10 done-criteria)

Parse each of these 5 inputs without error and route to the correct surface:

1. Decision: weekly-review runs Sunday PM. Context: end-of-week reflection beats start-of-week planning for this user. Owner: me. → vault/decisions/2026-06-20-weekly-review-runs-sunday-pm.md
2. Lenny Rachitsky — pivoted from describing to building research tools for PMs. → patches vault/people/lennysan.md (Lenny exists from voices.csv).
3. Insight: the Fable 5 export-control story plus Huryn's eval together justify a written internal note before any team considers Fable 5 adoption. Triggered by: noticing the cross-digest connection in the 2026-06-20 weekly review. → vault/insights/fable-5-internal-note-before-adoption.md
4. Meeting with security architecture team about Copilot AGENTS.md rollout. Key points: golden-path template needs an AGENTS.md stub, secure-coding patterns mirror from CONTRIBUTING.md. Action items: draft stub by EOW, circulate to repo template owners. → vault/events/2026-06-20/copilot-agents-md-rollout.md
5. Saving from Claude: the "default to refuted=true if uncertain" prompt-engineering line is load-bearing — without it, refute-prompts default to confirmation. → vault/insights/default-to-refuted-true-if-uncertain.md

For ambiguous input ("Some thought I had today"), ask which format.