Start Here

A refresher on how this vault works, written for someone who set it up, walked away, and came back.

The one idea that makes Obsidian click

Your vault is just a folder of .md text files on your hard drive.

That’s not a detail, it’s the whole point. Open C:\Users\Lee\Documents\Lee's Vault in File Explorer and you’ll see every note sitting there as a plain text file. Obsidian is a nice window onto that folder, not a database you’re locked into.

Everything else follows from this. Git can back it up because it’s text files. The website can read it because it’s text files. If Obsidian vanished tomorrow you’d still have every note, readable in Notepad.

How your vault is laid out

Lee's Vault/
├── START-HERE.md      ← you are here
├── dashboard.md       ← your daily driver: what's due, what's active
│
├── projects/          ← YOURS. One file per project, tasks inside.
├── tasks/inbox.md     ← YOURS. Quick capture, sort later.
│
├── wiki/              ← CLAUDE'S. Ask for changes; don't hand-edit.
│   ├── recipes/  home/  met-opera/  ai/
│   ├── index.md       ← catalog of every wiki page
│   └── log.md         ← what Claude did and when
│
├── raw/               ← IMMUTABLE. Original clippings and data. Never edited.
└── site/              ← the website's source code (coming in Phase 3)

The ownership split is the important part. You own projects/ and tasks/ — scribble freely. Claude owns wiki/ and keeps it tidy and cross-linked. And raw/ holds untouched originals so nothing is ever lost in summarizing.

Four things worth actually learning

Everything else in Obsidian is optional. These four are not.

1. Links — [[double brackets]]

Type [[ and start typing a note name. Obsidian autocompletes.

This is the feature. A folder tree forces every note into exactly one place; links let a recipe belong to “weeknight dinners” and “things the kids eat” and “uses the slow cooker” at once. Don’t agonize over folders. Link instead.

2. Backlinks — the thing links give you back

At the bottom of any note: Linked mentions. Every note pointing here.

You never maintain this. It’s the payoff for using [[links]] — the connections assemble themselves, and notes you’d forgotten resurface exactly when relevant.

3. Search — Ctrl+Shift+F

Full text, whole vault, instantly. Honestly, for a vault this size, search plus links will get you 90% of what you need.

Ctrl+O is the faster cousin — jump to a note by name without touching the sidebar. It’s the shortcut you’ll use most.

4. Tags — #like-this

Cross-cutting labels. #project/kitchen on a task in one file and a note in another ties them together. Click any tag to see everything wearing it.

Rule of thumb: folders for what a note is, tags for what it’s about.

Capturing a task in three seconds

The system only works if capture is frictionless. So:

1. Ctrl+O → type inbox → Enter
2. New line: - [ ] whatever it is
3. Move on with your life

Sorting is a separate job, done weekly. Don’t decide where a task belongs at the moment you think of it — that friction is what kills task systems.

Typing - [ ] gives you a checkbox. Click it in Reading view to tick it.

Task syntax cheat sheet

The Tasks plugin reads emoji as metadata. All optional — - [ ] call the plumber is a perfectly valid task.

A fully dressed task:

- [ ] Call the plumber about the upstairs radiator ⏫ 📅 2026-09-15 #project/house

Don’t type the emoji by hand. Run “Tasks: Create or edit task” from the command palette (Ctrl+P) and fill in a form.

Starting a project

Copy projects/_template.md, rename it, fill it in. The frontmatter block up top is what dashboard.md reads:

status: active      # active | on-hold | done | idea
area: home          # home | met-opera | personal
due: 2026-09-30

Change status to done and it moves itself from “Active projects” to “Finished” on the dashboard. Nothing to maintain by hand.

Write the “done looks like” sentence before the task list. A project without a definition of done becomes a list that never ends.

Shortcuts worth memorizing

If you learn two: Ctrl+O and Ctrl+P.

On your phone

Obsidian Sync keeps your phone and desktop identical — full vault, works offline, end-to-end encrypted.

[!warning] Never enable the Git plugin on your phone The plugin’s own documentation says it is “very unstable” on mobile — it can’t run real git on iOS or Android and falls back to a JavaScript substitute that crashes on larger repos. Your desktop is the only device that talks to GitHub. In Obsidian Sync settings, leave “Installed community plugins” off so the Git plugin never follows you onto the phone.

Two mobile surfaces, on purpose:

• The Obsidian app — real note-taking, offline, the whole vault.
• The website (vault.leesteiner.dev) — for ticking tasks off and quick capture. It writes to GitHub immediately, so it doesn’t matter whether your PC is on.

A note typed in the phone app reaches the website only after your desktop next wakes up and syncs. Fine for notes. Too slow for tasks — hence the website having its own capture box.

How the backup actually works

Phone (Obsidian) ⇄ Obsidian Sync ⇄ Desktop vault
                                        ↓ every 5 min, automatically
                                    GitHub (private repo)
                                        ↓ on every push
                                    vault.leesteiner.dev

You never run a git command. Three things keep it current:

1. obsidian-git commits and pushes every 5 minutes while Obsidian is open.
2. A scheduled task does the same hourly when Obsidian is closed.
3. Cloudflare rebuilds the website on every push.

Bottom-right of the Obsidian window shows sync status. If it’s quiet, it’s working.

The repo is private — it contains medical and financial records. The website build additionally refuses to publish wiki/home/medical/ at all, so even a misconfigured login can’t expose it.

A weekly rhythm

Fifteen minutes, once a week:

1. Empty the inbox. Every task in tasks/inbox.md gets moved into a project, done on the spot, or deleted.
2. Scan the dashboard. Anything overdue either gets a new date or admits it’s not happening.
3. Close things out. Finished projects → status: done.
4. Feed the wiki. Drop anything worth keeping into raw/ and ask Claude to ingest it.

When something looks wrong

Dashboard shows code blocks instead of task lists — Tasks and Dataview aren’t installed yet. Settings → Community plugins → Browse.

A [[link]] is grey, not blue — the note doesn’t exist yet. Click it and Obsidian creates it. Not an error; sometimes it’s a to-do.

Sync icon spinning forever — usually offline. Check scripts/vault-sync.log for what the scheduled task has been up to.

You deleted something important — it’s in git. Ask Claude to recover it; nothing committed is ever really gone.

Related

• dashboard — daily driver
• inbox — quick capture
• vault-website — the project that built all this
• index — the reference wiki