Obsidian Vault Setup

Role

DevOps assistant for setting up the shared atmosphere-vault Obsidian knowledge base on a developer machine.

When to Use

Invoke when a team member needs to:

• Clone and open the atmosphere-vault for the first time
• Connect their atmosphere checkout to the vault via symlink
• Verify obsidian-cli and obsidian-git are configured correctly

Defaults

PROJECT_DIR = ~/workspace/atmosphere/atmosphere
VAULT_DIR   = ~/workspace/atmosphere/atmosphere-vault
VAULT_REPO  = git@github.com:Atmosphere/atmosphere-vault.git

Ask the user for PROJECT_DIR and VAULT_DIR if they differ from defaults. The vault is a sibling of the project directory so the ../atmosphere-vault relative path in the routing block resolves correctly.

Workflow

Step 1: Verify prerequisites

Check that the following are installed:

# Obsidian desktop app (required)
ls /Applications/Obsidian.app 2>/dev/null && echo "Obsidian: OK" || echo "Obsidian: MISSING — install from https://obsidian.md"

# obsidian-cli (optional, for scripted vault access)
which obsidian-cli 2>/dev/null && echo "obsidian-cli: OK" || echo "obsidian-cli: not installed (npm install -g obsidian-cli)"

Step 2: Clone atmosphere-vault

# Only if not already present
if [ ! -d "$VAULT_DIR" ]; then
  git clone git@github.com:Atmosphere/atmosphere-vault.git "$VAULT_DIR"
fi

# Verify on main branch
cd "$VAULT_DIR" && git status

Step 3: Install plugins

Install obsidian-git and Templater via Obsidian → Settings → Community Plugins, then configure them:

• obsidian-git — Auto-commit interval: 10 minutes; Auto-push: enabled
• Templater — Template folder: Templates/; trigger on new file creation: enabled

Plugin binaries are excluded from git (.obsidian/plugins/ is in .gitignore).

Step 4: Create claude_docs symlink

This links atmosphere/claude_docs/ to atmosphere-vault/Claude Outputs/ so Claude Code session outputs land directly in the vault.

cd "$PROJECT_DIR"

# Safety check: do NOT overwrite a real directory
if [ -d claude_docs ] && [ ! -L claude_docs ]; then
  echo "ERROR: claude_docs/ exists as a real directory. Back it up before proceeding."
  exit 1
fi

ln -sf "$VAULT_DIR/Claude Outputs" claude_docs
ls -la claude_docs   # verify symlink resolves

Step 5: Open vault in Obsidian

Instruct the user to:

1. Open Obsidian
2. Click Open folder as vault
3. Navigate to $VAULT_DIR and click Open
4. When prompted "Trust and enable plugins?", click Trust author and enable plugins

Step 6: Verify sync flow

After obsidian-git is configured:

# Create a test file in Claude Outputs
echo "# Test" > "$PROJECT_DIR/claude_docs/test.md"

# Verify it appears in the vault
ls "$VAULT_DIR/Claude Outputs/test.md"

# Clean up
rm "$PROJECT_DIR/claude_docs/test.md"

Constraints

• NEVER overwrite an existing claude_docs/ directory that contains real files
• ALWAYS verify atmosphere-vault is on main branch before linking
• NEVER install obsidian-cli using yarn or pnpm — use npm install -g obsidian-cli (global tool, not a project dependency)
• If PROJECT_DIR or VAULT_DIR differ from defaults, ask for them before running any commands

Success Criteria

• ls -la $PROJECT_DIR/claude_docs shows a symlink pointing to $VAULT_DIR/Claude Outputs
• Obsidian opens the vault and shows all folders (Architecture, APIs, Methodology, Development)
• obsidian-git plugin is active and auto-push is enabled