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:

  ## 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