00 Second brain skills
Claude + Obsidian second brain skills: Stop explaining your business to AI.
Answer its questions once, for one to two hours. Two free Claude skills turn your answers into a vault Claude reads before it replies, and keep it true when things change.
no terminal. no coding.
just your answers.
Business reorg · QuestionsOct 2026
Before a single file moved, Claude asked me everything.
- Asked
- 95
- Answered
- 93
- Open
- 2
- Q1 Research and AI files: may I move them as whole folders?
- Q2 Links that point at renamed or retired notes.
- Q6 Clashing file names: a link can open the wrong venture’s file.
- Q12 Naming: short unique names, subject first.
- Questions 15 to 95, redacted.
money, people, clients:
kept off this page
01 Without and with
Out of the box, Claude doesn’t know your business.
So you get generic answers, or you paste the same paragraph about your business into every chat. A vault fixes that: your business written down as plain notes Claude reads before it answers.
- You
- every single chat: every
single
chat We’re a 10-person design agency. We design brands and websites for dental clinics. Website projects start at $5,000 and take six weeks. We write short and warm, never salesy. Our last three clients were… Now write a proposal for a new dental clinic. - Claude
- Here’s a proposal you can adapt: [Your agency] is a full-service creative studio that helps businesses stand out with bold, modern design… generic. it knows nothing about you.
- Read first
- Clients.md
- Pricing.md
- Voice.md
- You
- Write a proposal for a new client, a dental clinic, from our past projects and prices.
- Claude
- Same scope as our last two clinics: a brand refresh and a six-page site in six weeks, from $5,000. Written your way: short, warm, no sales talk. From [[Clients]] · [[Pricing]] · [[Voice]]
it read 3 notes before it answered.
not the whole vault.
Demo business: a made-up 10-person design agency, the one I build live in video 02.
What mine did this year
-
Receipt 01 · Pitch deck Sep 2026
1 day
My first pitch deck, built from my vault while I course-corrected. An investor said yes.
Source The deck. The investor stays unnamed. -
Receipt 02 · Applications 2026
Every one
Every job application Claude wrote from my vault got me an interview.
Source My application records. Companies stay unnamed. -
Receipt 03 · Interview prep 2026
1,000+
Questions prepared for an 11-stage hiring process. Claude built a vault folder that taught me SQL and security.
Source My prep folder. The company stays unnamed.
02 The map
It reads the map first.
My vault is about 21,471 notes, over 144 million tokens. Claude holds about 1 million at once, and it doesn’t need that much. It reads the index, then opens only the two or three notes the question needs.
A3 · One question, 21,471 notes
You ask
Why did we stop doing fixed-price projects?
the map. it reads
this one first.
00 Index.md
what lives where, one line per note
then opens 3 notes
My vault · About 21,471 notes
2,197 stay closed
Claude answers
Fixed price kept eating the margin on revisions, so we moved to a day rate.
- [[Pricing - Decisions]]
- [[Clients - Lessons]]
- [[Proposals - Rules]]
every line links
the note it came from
Marker on paper · Demo vault
- My vault
- Over 144,200,000 tokens
- What Claude can hold at once
- About 1,000,000
- What one answer reads
- The map and 3 notes
- this is all it reads to answer you
Vault size from my own vault, Oct 2026. Load only what is needed: Anthropic, “Effective context engineering for AI agents (opens in a new tab)”, 29 Sep 2025.
04 One fact, one note
One fact lives in one note.
By default, AI saves a new fact as a new copy and keeps the old one. Now you have two prices, and next week it grabs the old one. The skill replaces the fact in its one note, and git keeps the old version.
-
01 · What an AI found in mine
AI interview · 996 files26 Aug 2026
“Your vault contradicts itself in eight places.”
“A superb record of your conclusions and a thin record of your episodes.”
then it found a ninth
An AI interviewer read 996 files of my vault. That was the first thing it told me.
-
02 · What AI does by default
Pricing.md
website: from $4,000
Price update.md
website: from $5,000
which one?
You tell it the price went up. It writes a new note and keeps the old one. Two prices, and nothing says which is true.
-
03 · What the skill does
Pricing.md
website: from $5,000
git diff Pricing.md - website: from $4,000 + website: from $5,000the old one is still here
One note owns the price. Everything else links to it. Git keeps the old line, free, every version.
-
Receipt · Claude Code docs Checked 19 Oct 2026
“If two instructions contradict each other, Claude may pick one arbitrarily.”
Source Claude Code docs, “Manage Claude’s memory” code.claude.com (opens in a new tab) -
Receipt · Version history Checked 19 Oct 2026
Git: free, every version
Obsidian sells version history with Sync, from $4 a month, kept 1 to 12 months. Git keeps every version for free. The skill sets it up.
Source Obsidian Sync pricing page obsidian.md/sync (opens in a new tab)
05 What it takes
Two hours, and a plan you may already pay for.
Obsidian is free and keeps your notes as plain files on your own computer. Claude Pro includes Claude Code. The skills and git cost nothing.
- Obsidian: Free
- Claude Pro: $20 / month (Claude Code included)
- The two skills: Free
- Git, optional: Free
- Your time: 1 to 2 hours (Once. Then a minute after every change.)
Total: $20 / month
Your notes stay plain files on your own computer
Run it in three steps
-
01. Make an empty vault.
A new empty folder, opened in Obsidian as a vault.
-
02. Add the two skills.
Open the Claude desktop app, Code tab, and pick that folder. One minute, steps in the email.
-
03. Answer, then build.
Skill 1 interviews you. Answer like you’d brief a smart new hire; talking is fine. Skill 2 builds the vault from your answers.
don’t know an answer? it stays an open question.
never a guess.
06 Get both skills
Want your own vault? Take both skills.
Two skills and the questions that seed your vault, in one zip. Read every file before you run it. I would.
- obsidian-vault-skills.zip
- LICENSE : MIT, word for word
- README.md : unzip, then add both folders
- inspected-by-m-obsidian-interviewer/
- SKILL.md : asks the questions
- README.md : how to run it
- LICENSE : MIT
- NOTICE.md : credits
- references/ : questions, waves, evidence
- scripts/ : brief and gap checks
- assets/templates/ : answers, ledger, brief
- inspected-by-m-obsidian-builder/
- SKILL.md : builds it, keeps it true
- README.md : how to run it
- LICENSE : MIT
- NOTICE.md : credits and licenses
- references/ : guides, books, evidence
- scripts/vault.py : dry run, undo log
- assets/templates/ : starting files
- Works in
- Claude Code, in the Claude desktop app. No terminal.
- Needs
- Obsidian, free. Python 3.8 or later for the vault script.
- Yours to
- Copy, change and share, under the MIT License.
Check your inbox.
- Sent to
- the address you entered
- Skill
- Obsidian vault interviewerObsidian second brain builder
If the download didn’t start, get the file here.
Download the self-checkOne more thing
Want the newsletter to fit what you read? Say yes and I’ll email you a link. Open it and confirm, and a cookie in that browser lets the site keep a list of the pages you read here, with dates, next to your email, for 13 months. I use the list only to choose what I send you, and I share it with no one. Switch it off any time.
Free to copy, change and share, under the MIT License. It comes with no warranty: read a skill before you run it.
How I use your emailBox not ticked? You get the skills and nothing else, and your address is deleted after 30 days.
07 Work with me
Your notes are in order. Is your app?
Send one app or repository. You get a written report pack in five working days, at a price set before I start. I do 80 to 90% of the work with my AI skills. My team polishes and tests.
Not ready? Watch the inspections on YouTubeNot ready? Watch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)I read every request myself.
Free, 20 minutes, no code access. For apps with paying users.