Vault Context

This skill provides comprehensive awareness of the vault's structure, workflows, and conventions.

Directory Structure

vault/
├── blog/          # Published essays and blog posts (with YAML frontmatter)
├── daily/         # Daily journal (YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD.md format)
├── letters/       # Formal correspondence
├── projects/      # Active work (civil-war-history, game-theory, etc.)
├── reference/     # Evergreen guides and frameworks
├── archive/       # Completed work (mirrors main structure)
├── templates/     # Scaffolding for new content
└── scripts/       # Bash automation

House Rulebook Principles

1. •Everything starts in /vault as .md
2. •Filenames are utilitarian; titles live inside files
3. •One file per idea
4. •When in doubt, append — don't delete
5. •Source of truth = Markdown. Exports (PDF, HTML, blog) are derivatives

Weekly Writing Pipeline (Mon-Sun)

Monday: Capture

• •Dump fragments, quotes, observations (20-30 minutes)
• •Use daily notes for raw capture

Tuesday: Cluster

• •Group Monday's notes into 3 thematic clusters
• •Look for patterns across fragments

Wednesday: Outline

• •One-sentence thesis
• •Three proof points
• •Opener idea
• •Closer idea

Thursday: Draft

• •Write rough draft using outline
• •Mark gaps with [TK: ...] placeholders

Friday: Revision

• •Top-down revision:
  1. •Structure (big picture)
  2. •Style (sentence-level)
  3. •3-column method (problem/diagnosis/fix)

Saturday: Outside Read

• •Get feedback: where bored, unclear, unnecessary

Sunday: Publish

• •Final pass, write teaser, ship it

Pipeline Stages Reference

Make Commands Reference

Content Creation

• •make daily - Create today's daily note with template
• •make new - Interactive file creation wizard

Export & Publishing

• •make export LETTER=path/to/letter.md - Export letter to PDF
• •make export-blog POST=blog/post.md - Export blog post to PDF

Search & Organization

• •make search TERM=keyword - Full vault search
• •make wordcount FILE=path - Word/line count for file
• •make check-links - Find broken internal links
• •make recent - Show last 10 modified files with previews
• •make todo - Find all TODO/FIXME/NOTE comments
• •make tags - Extract and index all #tags
• •make graph - Generate Mermaid link visualization
• •make update-index - Auto-update index.md files

Quality & Maintenance

• •make lint - Check markdown formatting issues
• •make lint-fix - Auto-fix common formatting issues
• •make stats - Vault statistics dashboard
• •make track-words - Track word count history
• •make backup - Create timestamped backup archive
• •make clean - Remove all generated PDFs

Git Integration

• •make commit MSG="message" - Quick commit

File Conventions

Blog Posts

YAML frontmatter at top:

---
slug: post-url-slug
title: "Post Title"
date: Month Day, Year
excerpt: "Brief description for previews"
categories: ["Category1", "Category2"]
---

Daily Notes

• •Date as title: # 2025-10-04
• •Structure:
  markdown

  ## top 3
  -
  ## log
  -
  ## gratitude
  -
  

Projects

• •Descriptive title
• •Status section showing pipeline stage
• •Can be multi-file (subdirectories OK)

Letters

• •Include date at top
• •Use templates/letter.md as starting point

Internal Linking

• •Relative paths: [text](../reference/guide.md)
• •Wiki-style: [[filename]] or [[filename|display text]]
• •Run make check-links regularly to maintain link hygiene

Workflow Best Practices

1. •Daily practice: Start each day with make daily
2. •Weekly review: Check make stats for writing progress
3. •Monthly backup: Run make backup to create archive
4. •Link hygiene: Run make check-links before major commits
5. •Clean exports: Use make clean to remove old PDFs before backing up

TK Placeholders

Use [TK: description] to mark gaps during drafting:

• •[TK: find citation]
• •[TK: add example]
• •[TK: verify this claim]

Search for TK tags before publishing: make search TERM="[TK:"

Template System

Templates in templates/ use {{PLACEHOLDER}} syntax:

• •{{TITLE}} - Document title
• •{{DATE}} - Current date
• •{{SLUG}} - URL-friendly slug

The make new command automatically substitutes variables.

Archiving Process

When a project is complete:

1. •Move to archive/ preserving directory structure
2. •Update any index files
3. •Run make check-links to ensure no broken references
4. •Commit with clear message about archival

Instructions for Claude

When working with vault files:

1. •Always respect the house rulebook - markdown is source of truth, filenames are utilitarian
2. •Track pipeline stages - note where each piece is in the Mon-Sun flow
3. •Suggest appropriate Make commands - don't reinvent tools that already exist
4. •Preserve YAML frontmatter - critical for blog posts
5. •Maintain link hygiene - check links when suggesting file moves
6. •Use templates - reference templates/ for new file creation
7. •Mark research gaps with TK - help user track what needs investigation

For more details, see:

• •make-commands.md - Complete command reference