Obsidian Vault Operations Skill

Core operations for managing an Obsidian vault with the ACE framework.

File Operations

Creating Notes

Always include YAML frontmatter:

---
date: YYYY-MM-DD
tags: []
# Additional properties based on note type
---

Note Types and Locations

Type	Location	Required Properties
Daily	calendar/daily/	date, tags
Meeting	calendar/meetings/	date, tags, attendees, project
Idea	atlas/ideas/	date, tags, status, related
Source	atlas/sources/	date, tags, type, author, status
Effort	efforts/{state}/	date, tags, energy, area, due
MOC	*/maps/	date, tags

File Naming

• Daily notes: YYYY-MM-DD.md
• Other notes: kebab-case-name.md
• No spaces in filenames

Wiki-Links

Link Syntax

[[note-name]]                    # Basic link
[[note-name|Display Text]]       # Aliased link
[[note-name#Heading]]            # Link to section
[[folder/note-name]]             # Link with path

Link Best Practices

• Use relative paths from vault root
• Always link to actual files
• Use aliases for cleaner reading
• Link efforts from daily notes

Templates

Located in x/templates/:

• daily.md - Daily note template
• effort.md - Effort template
• idea.md - Idea template
• source.md - Source template
• meeting.md - Meeting template
• moc.md - Map of Content template

Template Variables

• {{date}} - Current date
• {{date:format}} - Formatted date
• {{title}} - Note title

Frontmatter Processing

Reading Frontmatter

// Parse YAML between --- markers
const frontmatter = parseYAML(content.split('---')[1]);

Updating Frontmatter

Preserve existing properties, update only specified ones.

Obsidian Bases

.base files in views/ folders use JSON format:

{
  "name": "View Name",
  "query": {
    "folder": "path/to/folder"
  },
  "view": {
    "type": "table",
    "columns": [...]
  },
  "sort": [...]
}

Common Operations

Create Daily Note

1. Check if exists: calendar/daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md
2. Read template: x/templates/daily.md
3. Replace variables
4. Write to daily folder

Move Effort Between States

1. Read effort file
2. Update energy property in frontmatter
3. Move file to new state folder
4. Update any links in dashboard

Process Inbox Item

1. Read item from +/notes/
2. Determine destination based on content
3. Add appropriate frontmatter
4. Move to destination
5. Delete from inbox

Safety

• Always backup before bulk operations
• Preserve existing frontmatter
• Validate links before creating
• Don't modify .obsidian/ config files