I turned Claude Code into a second brain (and it runs my daily notes)

Lior — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 19:07:23 +0000

Most people point Claude Code at a codebase. I pointed it at my notes.

Here is the whole trick, in a form you can copy in ten minutes.

1. A CLAUDE.md with house rules

Claude Code reads a CLAUDE.md in the folder it runs in. Mine says, in plain language:

the folder structure (PARA: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive, plus Inbox and Journal)
the frontmatter every note needs (type, status, created)
"never delete a note, move it to the archive"
"check today's date with date, never guess"
"before touching more than 10 files, show a list and ask"

That last line matters more than it looks. An agent on your personal notes needs a brake.

2. Four skills instead of forty prompts

A skill is just a SKILL.md in .claude/skills/<name>/ with a description (trigger phrases) and numbered steps. Claude picks it when you say the phrase. My four:

day-start – "start my day"

date +%Y-%m-%d
create 05 Journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md from the template if it doesn't exist
collect every - [ ] from projects with status: active and from yesterday's note
put at most 3 under "Today's Focus", the rest under "Open" with a link to the source
count inbox notes, nag if more than 5

sort-inbox – "sort my inbox": propose a table (note → folder → reason), execute only after "ok", move with the Obsidian CLI so links update.

weekly-review – "do my weekly review": read 7 daily notes, list what got done, one line per project, leave the two reflection questions empty for me.

link-note – "link this note": grep for 3–6 key terms, suggest the 5 best related notes with one reason each.

Haiku handles all of this. About 15 seconds per command.

3. Dashboards without AI

Obsidian Bases (built in since 1.9) read the frontmatter. A deadline traffic light is one formula:

if(!deadline, "⚪", if((date(deadline) - today()).days < 0, "🔴 overdue", if((date(deadline) - today()).days <= 7, "🟠 soon", "🟢")))

So the dashboards keep working when Claude is off.

What it changed

I stopped planning my day by hand. I capture everything into the inbox during the day and let the skill sort it on Sunday. The weekly review actually happens now, because the boring half is done before I open it.

Try it

The core (CLAUDE.md, the four skills, three templates) is free here: https://payhip.com/b/ObEnr

If you want the full vault with the dashboards, 40 prompts and guides, it's 12 USD: https://payhip.com/b/qfjuS (there is a German edition too).