AI-Native Obsidian Vault Setup Guide

Summary

This guide establishes a comprehensive Obsidian vault structure that functions as a "holistic life operating system." The system combines numeric folder prefixes for sidebar organization, structured templates for daily through quarterly reflection, entity-based notes for people and projects, and deep Claude Code integration for pattern analysis and automation.

Vault Architecture

The folder structure uses numeric prefixes to control sidebar ordering:

graph TD
    subgraph Root[" "]
        E[🌟 📊 🔗 Core Files]
        OS[000 OS]
        P[100 Periodics]
        N[200 Notes]
        EN[300 Entities]
        R[400 Resources]
        T[999 Triage]
    end
    OS --> Templates & Claude
    P --> Daily & Weekly & Monthly & Quarterly
    EN --> People & Teams & Goals & Projects
    R --> Books & Podcasts & Courses

Key design decisions:

Emoji files (🌟, 📊, 🔗) sort first as core strategic documents
000 series: Operating system components (templates, Claude configuration)
100 series: Time-based periodics (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly)
200 series: Notes, writing, and AI session logs
300 series: Entity types (people, teams, goals, projects, events)
400 series: Resource collections (books, podcasts, courses)
999 series: Triage inbox for unclassified content

Tag Taxonomy

Three specialized tag namespaces enable pattern detection across notes:

Self-insight tags capture personal patterns:

#insight/pattern — recurring behavioral patterns
#insight/trigger — emotional reaction catalysts
#insight/energy — energizing vs. draining activities
#insight/win and #insight/lesson — achievements and learnings

People interaction tags track relational dynamics:

#people/feedback-given and #people/feedback-got
#people/conflict, #people/connection, #people/idea

AI experimentation tags document tool learnings:

#ai/prompt — prompt engineering discoveries
#ai/agent — multi-step workflow patterns
#ai/limitation and #ai/surprise — capability boundaries

Code Snippets

Automated Week Setup Script

A Bun-based TypeScript utility generates weekly and daily notes with bidirectional linking.

// 000 OS/Claude/scripts/setup-week.ts
// Calculates ISO week dates, creates weekly note with navigation,
// generates five daily notes (Mon-Fri) with backlinks
// Invoked via: bun run 000\ OS/Claude/scripts/setup-week.ts [optional-date]

Dataview Action Items Query

Aggregates open action items across all notes.

TASK
FROM "100 Periodics" OR "300 Entities"
WHERE !completed
SORT file.mtime DESC

Essential Plugins

Dataview — Powers dynamic queries and rollups across notes
Periodic Notes — Creates date-formatted notes with templates
QuickAdd — Rapid timestamped capture to daily inbox
Metadata Menu — Frontmatter field management

Connections

teaching-claude-code-my-obsidian-vault — Similar approach using CLAUDE.md for vault context, with Spotlight integration for PDF search
obsidian-claude-code-workflows — Community patterns for Claude + Obsidian including master context files and batch operations