My personal Obsidian vault template. A bottom-up approach to note-taking and organizing things I am interested in.

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A detailed walkthrough of how Obsidian's CEO Steph Ango structures his personal knowledge vault. Covers his bottom-up, folder-minimal approach to note organization, heavy use of internal links, fractal journaling (daily fragments → weekly → monthly → yearly reviews), template and property conventions, a 7-point rating scale, and a Jekyll + Netlify publishing pipeline for his personal site. Includes a downloadable vault template on GitHub.

How I use Obsidian

Age of Obsidian is dead. Let’s all move on to Claude Code otherwise also recognised as <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-in/Prompt+Thinking%3A+A+Critique+of+Generative+Reason-p-9781509573899" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://www.wiley.com/en-in/Prompt+Thinking%3A+A+Critique+of+Generative+Reason-p-9781509573899</a> {Prompt-Thinking}

I still do massive brain dumps with pen and paper then make a bunch of todos with any sticky note program that has a “search” (google keep currently). I have tried so many things and brain organizing crap in my life i just give up. I will always be a messy fool.

I’ve been using Obsidian a lot and the combination of it with local AI makes it so powerful. The one thing from a “knowledge management” perspective that I think its an oversight for many people, is trying to rely on a simplistic folder structure “just because” you use heavy links. That reasoning is not contemplating certain interactions with AI. With AI, specific folders are a great idea because they allow you to sandbox knowledge and provide only certain info into automation workflows. Claude Cowork? Only give access to certain folders. Local n8n? Make it scan certain folders for specific new notes to trigger your workflows. Obsidian is the great base for an AI-aware knowledge system.

Strong system because it prioritizes flow over structure, links, not folders, do the heavy lifting. The real leverage is in the review loop; that’s what turns notes into insight.