Note-taking
How I Take Notes
One vault, plain text files, and an AI agent that does the filing for me. Here's how I think about it, and how you can run the same thing.
For a long time my notes were a mess. I'd try a new app, tell myself this was finally the one, and a few months later it was just another folder I didn't want to open. The strange part is that capturing was never my problem. I'm good at capturing. I jot things down all the time. What I never kept up with was everything after that, the filing, the linking, remembering where I'd put the thing I wrote six months ago. That work is slow and constant, and I just never got to it.
So I stopped trying to be more disciplined and changed the system instead. Now I put everything in one place and let an AI agent handle the upkeep. The notes stay organized because keeping them organized isn't my job anymore.
What I believe about notes
One inbox, and everything lands there
A stray thought, a recording from a meeting, a half-formed idea, an article I pasted in. It all goes to one inbox folder. I don't decide where it should live the moment I capture it. Deciding right then is friction, and friction is what always killed this for me before.
Links over folders
Folders make you pick one home for every note. The way I actually think is messier than that. A meeting touches a person, who works at a company, which connects to something I'm building. So I keep the folders loose and let the real structure live in the links between notes. I can move a file to a different folder and nothing breaks, because the links are what carry the meaning.
Plain markdown, for good
Everything is plain text on my own computer. No locked-in format, no app that can disappear and take years of thinking with it. I read and edit it in Obsidian, but the files would outlast any tool I happen to use. The markdown is what actually matters. Obsidian is just how I read it right now, and I could swap it for something else tomorrow without losing anything.
The boring upkeep isn't mine to do anymore
Filing, linking, summarizing, keeping the indexes current. That's work an agent does well and doesn't get tired of. I do the thinking and the capturing. It does the librarian work. That trade is the reason I actually keep notes now, because the part I always hated is handled.
I stopped trying to be more disciplined and changed the system instead.
Where the agent comes in
There's a file at the root of the vault that explains the whole system to an AI agent. The zones, the conventions, the couple of routines it runs. When I open the folder in Claude Code, or Cursor, or whatever agent I'm using, it reads that file and already knows how I work. Then I just talk to it.
"Process my inbox."
It reads everything I dumped in, turns each item into a real note in the right place, links it to the people and companies it mentions, and clears the inbox.
"Here's the recording from my call with Jordan."
It transcribes the audio, writes up the meeting with a summary and the action items, and updates Jordan's page and his company's page.
"Lint the vault."
It runs a health check for broken links, notes missing details, anything that's drifted, fixes what it can, and hands me a short list of the calls it wants me to make.
"What do I know about Acme Co?"
It reads across every linked note and tells me. That's the whole point of keeping it organized in the first place.
Two routines do most of the work. One is ingest, which takes whatever I dumped in and turns it into organized, linked notes. The other is vault-lint, which checks the whole thing for broken links, missing details, and anything that's drifted, then cleans it up. Both ship as plain text instructions inside the vault, so any capable agent can follow them, not just mine.
If you want to try it
I packaged the whole thing as an empty starter. The structure, the conventions, the templates, the two routines, and one small worked example so the idea clicks quickly. It's open source and free. You clone it, open it in Obsidian, point an agent at it, and start talking.
git clone https://github.com/Midnight-Farmer/obsidian-ai-vault.git my-vault
cd my-vault
claude
The full setup and a walkthrough are here: Midnight-Farmer/obsidian-ai-vault
Run a business? The same pattern, pointed at marketing, is the Marketing Toolkit.