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- [00:00]
A
This is Obsidian. And Obsidian is this little tool that people are using as their second brain. But what's really cool about it is they're pairing it with Claude code and they're getting crazy results out of it. It's literally a game changer. Now, I've been slow to adopt Obsidian because to me it's been a little daunting to look at. So I had my friend Vin and he clearly explains what Obsidian is, how to use it with cloud code, how to set up these commands that, that really drive the most out of Claude and all the LLMs. And it's an incredible episode, like a really game changing episode, because I think that people who understand how to use Obsidian and how to use Claude code, together, they're going to be able to live happier, healthier and wealthier lives. Why? Because it gives incredible ideas to you on tap. So I know that the people that stick around to the end of this episode, I think that for a lot of them, it's going to absolutely change how they use AI and it's going to be a super impactful way because you're going to get better ideas at the right time, the right moment, and it's going to make you happier, healthier and wealthier. Enjoy the episode. I've got my dear friend Vin, also known as Internet Vin, on the podcast. I literally begged him to come on. I begged him, I begged this man to come on and to teach us a very specific thing. Vin, by the end of this podcast episode, what are people gonna learn?
- [01:41]
B
I want you to have an understanding of how you can use Claude code and Obsidian. As a thinking partner, I want you to have an understanding of how you can stop having to explain things to agents over and over again and just pass specific files in. And I want you to understand how you can use Obsidian and Claude code to notice things about the way you think that you would not have noticed on your own without these tools.
- [02:05]
A
All right, from your lips to God's ears. Let's get into it.
- [02:09]
B
Okay, so first is like, what is Claude code? So Claude code is this, like, agent that you can use in a command line interface. So it's just basically this tool you can use that can control your computer and you, you can use it through natural language, right? So I can say make a file or make a file on my desktop that says hello, Greg in plain text, right? And it's going to go and do this. That's really cool. That's something that's new. That wasn't possible before. Before this, I had to go to the desktop, open some text editor, and then create that file, right? And now this file is on my desktop, so I can say, open the file. There you go. Hello, Greg. That's crazy. Right? Now, what's interesting about this is if you have this agent that can control and do things on your computer, that means that whatever you can describe to it, it can start to do. And so if you describe a project to it or you get into these long conversations with an agent, it can do more and more complex things. The more information it has, the more complex things it can do. But the problem is that if you have to, let's say, you know, like I write some super long description about a particular project, or I have like an hour conversation with this agent about a particular project, it's like, I don't want to have to create a new session to explain that all. I don't want to have to explain that over and over and over again. A lot of people are using like, Claude or ChatGPT on the web and it has things like memory, but you, you can't, like, control. You don't know what's in that memory. Right. You don't know what it knows and what it doesn't know. And so there needs to be some way of like, you know, passing information into these agents that is easier and faster, and the better information you can give it, and the faster the information you can give it, the more stuff it can do for you, and the better, the faster you can delegate to it. Okay, so now even if I, let's say, let's say I had like, you know, let's say I wrote like a big project description here, right? Create a file that describes, you know, a project about to do list app that is very minimally designed and reads from all of my calendar, MI messages and Slack and interprets it into a task list of tasks that it thinks that I should do. I don't know, some idea. Now, this is a file that could be on my desktop. And what I can do when I use cloud code is I can reference that file and pass it in whenever I want to.
- [05:09]
A
And why that's important is because it's the context, right?
- [05:14]
B
Yes.
- [05:15]
A
The whole game is feeding the beast. Good context.
- [05:21]
B
Yes, exactly. And I don't want to have to do this over and over again. And when I work on this over days, I'm not going to remember what we talked about, right? So I want some kind of file that I can pass in. Oh, sorry, Greg, one sec.
- [05:36]
A
Yeah, and that's. That's sort of the problem that a lot of people are facing with cloud code is like, they're using it and then they're saying, well, it's, it's okay. It's not like game changing. And the issue is they don't have. They're not. They're not feeding the right context at the right time.
- [05:52]
B
Yes, exactly. And so here's, so here's like a project description that it wrote. And obviously I can pass this in and this is like a. This is like a general one that I just created. But you, you can make these, like, very complex. You can build them into like, robust fil. Right, over time. So we know that cloud code can create files and it can repeat and it can read files, right? So now I can say, let's say I created a new session. So here's a new session. And now I can say, like, I want to work on this project and I go here and it's going to be to do Dash app. Here it is. Boom. Now, I didn't need to explain the file again. I need. I didn't need to explain the project again, right? So it's going to read this file and it's going to start like, you know, that saved me a lot of time. Great project. Before diving in, a few questions to scope the first session. So that'll continue. So now, what is Obsidian? Right? Obsidian is this tool that. It's kind of like an interface that sits on top of a collection of markdown files, right? So here, like, this is reading a markdown file. How I use Obsidian story development, right? I have daily notes. This is my daily notes. This is a. This is also a markdown file. I should do my own fundamental analysis into, think into how things stay pure when they grow and become more mainstream, right? This is just a file that I have. I have, you know, like a file on Greg Eisenberg that I haven't put in.
- [07:24]
A
That's. That's weird.
- [07:25]
B
Yeah, that's pretty weird. And so I make files, like notes of things that I'm learning from people and stuff like that too. So I have different files for everything, right? And the interesting thing that makes a vault, which is Obsidian, what Obsidian interacts with, this whole thing is called a vault. What makes it different than a folder is that Obsidian is not only interacting with just like a, you know, a folder of files, but what it does is it also allows you to make interactions, to connect relationships between files. So I can say, today, I am on a podcast with Greg Eisenberg. Now, this file is linked to that Greg Eisenberg file. Super interesting. Super interesting. And so when people like, like, like people, there's a lot of people who really, really like abusing Obsidian and tools like Obsidian because of this ability to form into relationships. This is unique to just having a folder, A folder on your computer cannot show these interrelationships. And so it gets really interesting when you start to keep making these, like, interrelationships over time. Right? And so what happens, here's a little visualization. And so in here, these are each one of these circles is a file and it's showing how it's, like, connected to all of these other files where I've written things about. So here's like, personal agent infrastructure, right? And so I could look, you know, and I guess I should also add just kind of a comment on this and what was difficult about doing this demo? There is, like, so much personal information in here because this is like my personal thing. So I don't even know, like, what's going to show up on the screen here. Right. But that's part of doing demos like this, which is. Which are kind of weird and interesting. But you can see personal agent infrastructure links to, like, Agentic AI. There's like a link here to Telegram. There's a link here to, like, Toby, the founder of Shopify. There's a link to, like, Presence log, Claude Bot, you know, and then here's like, I. I have a podcast too, called the Other Stuff. And like, you'd see I'm obviously doing a lot of, like, thinking about that a lot. Right. And so I can also, let's say if I go to Greg Eisenberg and I go to Local Graph. So here's like, all the times I've written about Greg Eisenberg, right? Notes on time constraints, how I use Obsidian, which is just kind of interesting. So if I'm listening.
- [09:55]
A
I love you too, Vin. I love you too.
- [09:58]
B
If I'm listening to a show and I'm picking up different patterns, I can. I can reference that back to. To Greg. So that's really interesting. But here's the thing. The reason why people love Obsidian is because of these interrelationships. The idea that you could open a file and then, you know, I just open this file and then I'm like, oh, interesting. I mentioned Greg Eisenberg. I can click that and it goes to that file. That's interesting, right? It shows. It works more to it. It works more like the way your brain works. Your brain connects these patterns all the time. Yeah, yeah.
- [10:29]
A
So I see why it's interesting. But how does this get me better output?
- [10:36]
B
Exactly. Yeah. So the next thing is, Obsidian released this new tool called Obsidian cli. And what that allows you to do is it allows you to use Claude code and it can go and it can read all of the files in your Obsidian vault, which is a folder of text files. But with the Obsidian cli, it can give claude code not only those files that it can read and access, but, but it can also give Claude code information about the interrelationships of those files. So you can see. So Claude code can see that, oh, this file is connected to this file and this file and this file. And that gets very interesting in terms of what Claude code can understand about you and what Claude code can understand about all of the relationships between the things that you're working on. It can start to surface patterns about what you're thinking about that you are not seeing for yourself some idea that you might have been writing about for a year in this vault. It could be a latent idea and it can just immediately say, like, hey, did you know that you've been writing about this same pattern in startups or in this particular project you're working on in every single note you're making across these different domains? And, and seeing that for the first time can be like a huge light bulb effect. It can cause like huge progressions in your learning and your understanding and your point of view on the world, but also in what you're working on. So I've written out, I wanted to demonstrate how that actually works in terms of how I can pass information into an agent that would be impossible without Obsidian and cloud code. So here's some commands that I have that I use and I don't want you to be afraid of, like, all this stuff. I know this can look intense, but here, here's what, here's what. I've got some commands and this is just terminal that I've created and I'm running it in Obsidian. You don't need to use this. You can just also do this in your own terminal session, in whatever tool you want. But I put it in Obsidian because I want to see it all together and I wanted to show you the ways in which you can, like, integrate and customize this environment. So here's a cool thing. So context, slash, context load, full context, about my life, work and current state. Reads context files, daily notes and follows backlinks to build a complete picture. So I'll just show you that right here. So like, let's say I open a new session in. In. In Claude, just on my desktop and now it's like I'm about to work on something, but before I work on it I can just type context demo. Now it's going to read a whole bunch of files about where I'm currently at. Done. Like I've already preloaded. I've already preloaded in all this context now. So you can see it's going to start reading all these files. It's reading a. Read me. It's reading context about new, which is a media company that I'm working on. It's reading about other stuff. It's reading my personal. The other stuff is my show. It's reading a personal workflow context and so I don't have to worry about it not knowing the key information that I want it to know. I just did that one command and now it's going to get all that information done. So I can use slash today, which is a morning review, pulls calendar tasks, imessages in the past week of daily notes into a prioritized plan for the day. Why does this matter? Well, okay, sure, you can set up an agent and give it access to your calendar and your tasks and imessages and things like that, but it's miss. It's that's. That doesn't have all of the information about what you're thinking about and why. If I'm writing daily notes about some particular technology or project or thing that I'm interested in, does my calendar reflect actively? Like, does it match the subjects I'm actually writing about? If an agent has that context, it can more effectively give you information about what you should do or not do or. And it can more effectively make decisions on what should be in your calendar and on your calendar. Here's another one. Slash close day, end of day processing extracts action items, surfaces, vault connections, checks, confidence markers, needs to be updating. So I have a bunch of hypotheses that I think about and I give them a confidence rating. This is an idea I'm working on. I feel very solid about it. Here's another idea I'm working on. I'm not sure about it. So these are like daily operations things, but this is what I use Obsidian for the most, which is thinking tools. I really, really, really like working with LLMs as a thinking partner. That's my favorite way of using LLMs. I know people like to use agents and LLMs to build things, but I really like using them to think alongside me and build when I feel like you Know I really have a novel way of viewing things. So let's see here. So ghost, here's, here's a command I have. It answers a question the way I would. It builds a voice profile from the vaults, writes in that voice, then evaluates the fidelity. So I can just say what do I think of AI? And I'm going to show you this challenge topic. It pressure tests current beliefs using the vault's own history and finds contradictions, counter evidence and shifts in thinking. Why does that matter? Well, if I want to make sure that I'm continually developing as a human being and as a, as a, as in my skills, I want to make sure that you know, the POV I have isn't overly biased or limited. So this can challenge me emerge surface ideas. The vault implies but never states conclusions from scattered premises, unnamed patterns, unarticulated directions. This is super, super useful because a lot of times, you know, I, I can be stuck just surfacing ideas in a, in, in a lot of different ways like for years and just having someone say a simple thing to me that just says hey, this is just naming the idea. Hey, did you know that you keep circling around this pattern. Huge breakthroughs. Slash drift. It compares, it compares my stated attention intentions against actual behavior over 30 to 60 days surfaces what I am avoiding ideas people on this podcast, the listeners will probably like this one deep 30 day vault scan with cross domain pattern detection and graph analysis to generate generate ideas across all domains. This gives me not just ideas on like things I should work on like, it gives me ideas for tools and things like this, but it also gives me ideas on like films I should watch, products I should buy again, all influenced by like, like things I'm writing about in my vault. Trace tracks how an idea has evolved over time across the vault. So let's see some of this stuff. The Trace demo. So I did this one already and the way this would work is I just like create a tab here and I could just be like Claude Trace. And I had to create demo versions of all of these commands because of how much personal information is in my vault. But still I don't even know like I, I, I can't even control what is going to show up on the screen.
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A
And I, I have just a dumb question. Like all those commands that we saw, is that commands that you created or is that what Obsidian created?
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B
That those are commands that I created and you can create them very easily by just asking Claude code to create a specific command.
- [17:57]
A
Mm we can include, I'll include in the show notes and in the description, just like a link where people can click to get access to some of vin's skills. If that's. If that's.
- [18:12]
B
Yeah, for sure. Totally.
- [18:14]
A
Yeah.
- [18:14]
B
So you can see here what I did was I just type slash, trace. Demo. Demo is just because I'm showing this publicly how I use Obsidian. And so what this does is it tracks my. I, the way I've developed and the way I've navigated this idea through my vault. So I have an example here. It's really interesting. So here I did it and I. And I. And I let it run. And what it's doing is as it says, like, I'll trace how your relationship with Obsidian has evolved. Let me start by building a vocabulary map and searching across the vault. So it. When you have like. So now it starts going through the vault, reading all of these different files and it can see all of the files that are connected using the Obsidian cli. This is a lot, man. This is, this is something that I would never be able to do on my own. And to read all of these files to know what, how they're interconnected with each other, this is just not possible for me to do as a human being. And then it spits this out. I now have everything I need to construct this trace. Here's the full evolution trace. How I Use Obsidian first appeared January 11, 2025 timespan 13 months. That's in relation to this vault, specifically meaning all the files in here. It says pre vaults. December 2024. The essay How I take notes in the West End of Toronto, dated December 1, 2024, describes a complete system where Obsidian plays no role at all. The system is audio dumps via Mac Whisper LLM dialog loops. Canopia for spatial mapping, Physical notebooks for cognitive friction. Fusion land for tracking arena for fragments. The pipeline is capture process crystallization. This is the baseline. Obsidian is not in the picture. Discovery and skepticism. January to May 2025. The first daily note in the vault. Raw excitement mixed with uncertainty. I could probably drop transcriptions in here too as a way of storing them. The current theory is that in terms of note taking, bi directional linking is not that useful. But I don't know. Then it says the chosen tool. Originally I was backlink link. It says here how I use Obsidian. Note a pivotal realization about backlinking. Originally I was backlinking to general terms podcasts or physical fitness or filmmaking. I'm realizing it's not the most useful way to use Obsidian. The most important thing to do is to Create notes for each of my patterns, theories, projects, or perspectives and get them documented and out of my head and then link to those notes. So it's just like pulling from things I've written and it's forming this historical. This history of this concept. And I could do this with anything. I can do this with, like, startups. I can do this with a particular project, with foods, my relationships, like a hobby, anything, Right? And then phase four, January 2026. A month of explosive building. Everything still requires. And then, like, everything still requires me to actively prompt and manage each section session. The next unlocked is figuring out how to get agents tasks to run automatically. The friction is no longer with Obsidian itself, but with the boundary between the vault and agent execution. So you can see I'm really pushing myself. Right? And it's cool. This is. This is a very useful thing for me to understand how my use of this tool is evolving. And it's just. I think it's just absurd that I can just be making notes and then about all of these different things through my life. Like, even as a parent, I can. I can, like, reflect on the different things I'm learning. I just think this is insane that and a computer can have this much information about me and surface these patterns. I would not be able to do this on my own and this fast. And what a great tool it is for me. Like, I can just like now write in here and, you know, as I'm thinking about things and it gives me ideas, right, about my life and the projects that I'm working on. So I can say, you know, it's interesting the way that my relationship with Obsidian has evolved over time. It makes me think a lot about the way in which my relationship with computers has evolved over time since I was a kid to now. It's interesting how these things just happen and compound over time and we don't really realize it. So it's just like a. No. Right? It's an idea. So that's an example of something.
- [22:52]
A
So I think a part of getting good at Obsidian sounds like reflect, you know, inserting reflection into your everyday life. Because a lot of people, you know, we're moving from meeting to meeting, we're busy, we're parents. You know, we grow up and we, of course, write things down in notebooks and stuff like that. But I feel like as we get older, we actually write and reflect less and less.
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B
Yes.
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A
You know, how do you. How have you been able to insert reflection into. Into your life?
- [23:29]
B
Yeah, I think for me, it's really about There's. There's two reasons that I think reflection is interesting and making notes a lot or is interesting. One is that it's great to be able to look back on them. Like, for me now, obviously I can use an agent, but to. For me to go back and see these notes and realizing that, oh, like, I'm a person that's continually changing, my skill is continually changing, projects are continually evolving. It's. It's just amazing. It's an amazing part of life to be able to reflect on how things are changing over time and how you are changing over time and how the world is changing over time. But the other thing is that there's like a functional reason too. A reason I like to make notes a lot is because that's how I generate ideas. When I, like, get. When I sit down at my computer and I write things down, that's where ideas come. For example, this thing I just wrote here, it's just a quick note. I'm just doing it in real time. I'm just making it up right now. But by writing it out, I feel like I internalize it more. And I like having good ideas, I like progressing. So because I like having good ideas and I like progressing, writing is how I do that. And so I think to, you know, if you want to cultivate like a writing as a habit, I think first you have to connect it with the idea that this is how you progress and this is how you generate ideas, and this is how you have form, original ways of thinking. The other thing I'll say is that writing right now is a big way of how you delegate things to agents. That's like a whole new. That's a whole new aspect of it. So if you can develop a writing habit, you have a lot more context that you can pass over to an agent, which then dramatically, I think, increases the amount of, like, things you can delegate and the amount of things you can build. I hope that was a good answer.
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A
How does this relate to openclaw? Because if you think of openclaw, it's essentially, you know, at the best case, an extension of you.
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B
Yeah.
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A
That could go and do things, you know, independently, slash, based on your guidance. So how can you use commands obsidian and Open, claw and reflection harmoniously?
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B
Yeah. So I think if you look at, like, here's an example of one command that I do. It's just like a schedule command. And so what I asked this thing to do is I said schedule. I said, can I take a meeting with Greg eisenberg today at 20 at 2:00pm Right. And what this does is, of course, it can look at my calendar and stuff like that, but it's also going to look through my daily notes. It's going to look through what I can care about, and then it's going to give me some perspective. So it says your day is stacked. You're already recording on Greg's podcast this morning, followed by a team lunch outing and meeting with Peter and Vince. Your February 17th notes show the Greg episode has been Top of Mind. The Vault has a dedicated Greg Eisenberg Note. No, not a 2. So the recommendation is, no, not at 2pm, but you might not need a separate meeting at all. Yeah, that's. That's actually the correct answer. How does that relate to openclaw? Well, openclaw is this, like, autonomous agent that can go and do things if you set it up to do that. Like, it can do things without you having to prompt it all the time. It can just go and make decisions and build things for you on your own. So now what OpenClaw can do is in the same way I just did this command, openclaw can do this on its own as well, and it can go and read my vault, find connections, and then make decisions on behalf of me with, like, a deeper understanding of me. And now instead of, like, managing an agent or talking to another human about working on something, I just focus on managing this vault. This is like the new source. I just continually try and make it so that this vault has all of the information needed so that I can delegate to an agent, and the agent can just pull from this vault source and make decisions. And if it's not making the right decisions, I'm changing something on the Vault. I'm not necessarily working with the agent specifically, kind of. Kind of. That's my speculation on that subject. I think it's very interesting.
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A
Yeah. I think one thing that worries me a little bit about it is if Obsidian is really your second brain, giving open claw access to your second brain is scary.
- [27:58]
B
Yeah, scary. And I would say that is the fundamental. The. The weird element of this technology, I would say. And I have purposely given Obsidian, I mean, sorry, the Claude code or any agent access to a lot of information. I've purposely done that because my relationship with this is I want to understand what these things are, and I want to understand what they are revealing about, you know, how our relationship with computers is changing. But it's weird. It's like you have to really think about how much information you're sharing with these agents and Whether that's the right decision or not the right decision. And I think it's going to be very interesting to see how privacy as a concept evolves and changes and what we fight for or don't fight for and like in the future of our society and our world. Even with every one of these commands, I had to create a new version of them, a demo version, so that it wouldn't reveal too much personal information while I'm on screen on this podcast. And even then, it's like a. It's a toss up. You know, I could type the demo version, but who knows what's going to be shown on screen? You know,
- [29:15]
A
what other commands do you want to show?
- [29:19]
B
So there's connect, which is allow. It allows me to take two domains and connect them using the vault's link graph. So I can just say I did one here and I just asked it to connect filmmaking and world building. And so it goes through and it reads all these different files and then it can start to say, okay, let's connect these two concepts. So notes and filmmaking notes and filmmaking's neighborhood. So I was like 35 film watch list my first meeting with Toby Notes in the world building neighborhood. The world building essay New as a media company. So these are different things I'm thinking about. So bridge one, the interview portal and the constructed world in filmmaking, if I noticed something specific and asked a question about it, it would open a portal into a person's internal world, which is often a vast universe of concepts and beliefs and visions. So world building essay. I want my blog to show you what I value, what I believe, what I worry about, like a tomb from ancient Egypt. I want my blog to be a place that you dig up and examine long after I'm gone. These are things that I've written and I can start to see how these ideas connect together. Bridge to always on documentary equals continuous world building. Always on documentary is a creative strategy where companies continuously narrativize their characters, pursuits, conflicts and visions through documentary. So these are like things that I'm writing about and it's showing me the ways in which these are connected. I think this can get very interesting depending on the kinds of things that you're willing to connect together. You could get probably pretty crazy with it as well, depending on what you're writing about in your vault. I could connect like shawarma and startups if I wanted to, for example, and see the kind of connections that are coming between these things. Again, really interesting because all of this is happening super quickly and I don't need to explain any of this to an LLM. I can just type something like, slash, connect Filmmaking World building.
- [31:26]
A
The. The. A lot of the examples you're using is personal reflection.
- [31:31]
B
Yeah.
- [31:32]
A
How do you think about, you know, for example, note taking in meetings? Like, maybe you have like a granola or Gemini notes, taking notes and sort of putting it into Obsidian or. And by the way, when I say notes, those could be meetings that you're not even in. They could just be like, Tommy met with Vince and they had this meeting and I want to put it in here. How do you think about that?
- [32:05]
B
So it's a really good question. So I think you can use these vaults however you want to use them in terms of, like, you could put any text you want in here. If you want to put your granola meeting transcripts in here, you can put them in here. And you have to just make sure, you know, maybe you're doing something like this, right? So you're just like, meetings. And then you're like, okay, these are. This is, you know, project one. And then every time you do a meeting, you take your granola notes and you just put them in here, Right? So you're like meeting Greg Eisenberg VIN plus vin. And then, you know, that file is created now and you can just drop your trend. You can just drop your meeting notes in here. And now that's in the vault. And then you can pass that into the agent or the agent will discover it. Right. Especially if you start tagging like, oh, I'm going to tag this back to my podcast or something. There. Now it's connected. So now the agent, it has more context. And now it knows that this transcript is related to this other file. Great. Um, I think that's up to you. I think the way that you, the, the amount of information that you put in here is up to how you want to use the vault and how you want to delegate to things to agents, and maybe you even want to create different vaults for different purposes. For me, per. For me, I use LLMs and agents as a way to increase my own level of understanding of subjects. So I use it for a lot of reflection and things like that. So I don't want an agent to write into the files. Like, I could easily get it to do that. Like, I could just say, like, even here I've. I've asked it to write a description of some commands that I can talk about today, but I don't, I don't, I don't want it to make a file to do this because I want to control all the files in my Obsidian vault because I, I always wanted to pull from what I think about things, right? Not what it thinks about things. And if it starts making its own files in this vault, then I don't know, like, is like, when it's finding these patterns, is it finding patterns about things it's written or is it finding patterns about things I've written? So I create a rule for myself which is like a strict separation between these things. I only wanted to write things on the side here and then I will take that and, and, and, and write what I think should be included. Right.
- [34:15]
A
Some.
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B
Yeah, go ahead.
- [34:16]
A
No, I was just going to say like, you know, I could see the power of just using it for your own reflections. I can also of, you know, AI is really good at, you know, going out on the Internet, finding information based on trends and stuff like that, distilling it in a way that you want and having that being put into your world is also interesting.
- [34:44]
B
Yes, totally. I think that. And also like, let's say if you asked the Obsidian, if you asked the cloud code to go through your Obsidian file and generate ideas, which, you know, ideas for tools that you should build, well, then you can just like say, okay, cool, if that's. If I have an idea for a tool that I should build, just generate a description of that and then just build the tool. So.
- [35:09]
A
Exactly.
- [35:11]
B
Yeah. I want to show this one so that it's like less on reflection.
- [35:18]
A
Like, for example, like, you know, I'm a, I built this thing called ideabrowser.com and every single day we give this validated startup idea, like someone theoretically can go and, you know, grab that information, put it in an Obsidian vault and then based on that, basically, you know, help them build the actual thing. Right?
- [35:40]
B
Totally. Yes. So I want to show you this because I think it'll, it'll really make it. They'll take it out of the realm of reflection and into the realm of building. But the only issue is this takes a bit. So that's ok. Yeah. So the other thing is that with all of these, like, with these commands, another pattern that I'm noticing is that they take a bit because it's reading so many files. And I would say that's a big difference between using Obsidian and like, or using cloud code with access to this Obsidian vault that I'm noticing is all of my requests are taking way longer and it's just because it's reading so much more. So like, look at this one. So this is ideas demo. So I'll run a comprehensive ideas generation. Let me start by gathering vault structure and context in parallel. And then if you look, it's really interesting to see what it's doing. Right? So it's like Obsidian orphans, right? So it's like, I guess orphans are like files that are on their own, not connected to things. Right. So that's interesting that it knows that Obsidian dead ends, Obsidian resolved, Obsidian tag counts. So it's just trying to, it's trying to figure out like some connection between all these things. And then it says, okay, daily read. So it's reading my daily notes. Then it found this file called New Context, which is new as this media company I'm working on. Then it's like read file. The other stuff, Context. That, that's podcast. The other thing I would say to you guys is I do manage, I write, I create context files for projects that are pretty extensive. I'll show you. I, I was, I didn't know if I was going to show this because it's very personal. But like for the other stuff, look at this other stuff. Working contacts. What shifted recently front loading profile by traveling to San Francisco, New York City to record guests. This is super personal stuff. But what is the other stuff? The format, core beliefs of the show. Research is the foundation solid. The best conversations feel like discovery solid. You know, here's the team that's working on it. And so what happens is this again, very personal. But this is context that it just pulled in. So now it knows who's working on my podcast. What are the, what are the recent hypothesis hypotheses I'm exploring? And it just got that information. That's just like one of the things it did. Personal workflow, context, super personal file. But it shows like, you know, like what my daily schedules is like, you know, things that I have to do like in my personal life. So it's like pulling that how I like to work, how I don't like to work. Personal agent infrastructure is another thing. Let's see what happens if I pull this up. This is a project in which I want to take a step towards increasing my personal infrastructure workflow, delegation. However you want to describe with agents understanding what it means to delegate to agents more and more implementation approach. So this is like what I'm writing about the file, about how I'm thinking about using agents personally. And again, that's an example of one of the files it's reading. That's just one of them. So you saw like the other stuff, the Personal workflow. And it's factoring that all in to this task I've asked it to do, which is generate ideas for me, gathering data from your daily notes, calendar and vault structure. This takes a moment since it's pulling from multiple sources. Again, one of the things with this is that it's just going through a lot of information, man. A lot of information. So it takes longer. You know, it's already been going for five minutes. Right. And so that's, that's something I'm noticing. But for me, that's what I want. I want that I want. I want a response from LLMs that is very, very contextual to the things that I'm writing about. And I think a lot and I think that's how me and an agent can work best together, where I just focus on continually noting that my, the, the where I'm currently at in terms of the projects I'm working on and what my understanding is and what I find interesting. I want to maintain that and make it as current and as deep as possible. So whenever I'm talking to an agent, it has the best representation at all times of who I am in that moment. When I ask the agent for something.
- [39:54]
A
Yeah, that's the goal, right? Yeah, that's the question that we all should be asking of ourselves, which is, does the agent have the most up to date information on the projects, on my preferences and my dreams and my hopes and my goals? Because you're. It's only as good as the up to date version of that, correct?
- [40:16]
B
Yes, 100%. The quality, the, the quality of information that the agent has entirely determines what it can do for you. Right. If it doesn't know a lot about you, it's not going to be able to do a lot for you. But if it knows a lot, then it can do things for you that I think even some of your, in some. It's kind of weird to say, but I mean that you don't even know about yourself in ways, I mean it makes sense.
- [40:42]
A
Right. Because ultimately what this is doing, to distill it to its core, it's connecting the dots.
- [40:48]
B
Yes.
- [40:50]
A
Obsidian and Claude code here are, are connecting the dots. Now it's actually quite difficult as a, as a business owner or just as a personal, in our personal lives to connect the dots. Like why do people in a lot of ways go to, you know, coaches, therapists.
- [41:06]
B
Yes.
- [41:08]
A
You know, if you go to a therapist and you know, you have someone who is. You're doing most of the talking. Right. Think about it. You're doing a lot of the reflection and the therapist and coach is sort of guiding you. That's what this is doing in a lot of ways. And I'm not saying, by the way, that don't go to your therapist, you know, just. But I'm. But my point is it helps. It helps you uncover what are their dots and how you can connect them.
- [41:38]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And for me, yeah, it's. It's just really exciting and yeah, it's just. It's just a crazy time with computers. So let's look at this. This thing finished. So this is an idea generation report vault, relationship exploration. This is. This is pretty dense, right? Like to get an idea report. Like, I think this is. This is really going to show how we can move you move from reflection to something actionable. So structural highlights. So again, this is just Obsidian stuff, right? Orphans worth noting. There's some defense technology stuff here. Just a theme that's growing in Canada. Massive intellectual investment sitting in isolation. Also orphan agentic software. So orphan just means these are files I haven't really linked. Random notes I just wrote once or something. Unresolved links that reveal latent interests, hidden relationships. Again, all reflection stuff. Fine. What's working? Obsidian Cloud code as a combined system is working for me. This is producing genuine breakthroughs in thinking and output day per domain structure when enforced. This is basically, I started splitting my schedule where each day has a specific focus. This is cool. And this is very true. The Greg Eisenberg episode as a forcing function, it's compressing months of thinking about Obsidian and agents into a clear thesis with demos. Very true. You know, coming on the show and doing this forced me to synthesize everything I knew and present it. But here's where we're going to the actionable stuff. Tools to build the slash graduate slash command Daily note idea extractor based on daily notes are full of idea. So daily notes are full of idea tags and interesting thinking that never gets developed. The vault has nine idea tags, but hundreds of undiscovered insights. Build a command that scans recent daily notes, identifies ideas tagged or not, and prompts you to decide. Create a standalone note, add to an existing file or dismiss. This turns a daily note stream into a structured idea pipeline. Obsidian Vault for new it says I just have to manage and set up a central Obsidian vault for new. What that means is in the same way that I'm creating this vault and it has all my ideas and my patterns and everything like that, why would I not create one for my team where they like as A team we can go and ask this vault questions and we can all contribute to it. Here we go. Tools to start using what is this? Types for all external documents Interesting. A time blocking act that enforces day A time blocking app that enforces day per domain Meaning since I'm trying to focus on one thing each day one aspect of my life it's saying why not create a time blocking app that forces you to do that Interesting systems to implement one sentence in Obsidian Agent handles arrests this is literally the Demo 3 version of the Greg Eisenberg Eisenberg Prep. You're already imagining it. The next step is to actually building it. Start small write schedule a call with person about topic this week in a daily note and have Otis or Claude bot or openclaw pick it up and handle it. So it's saying maybe you can delegate right from the note itself is how I'm interpreting that. Super interesting. Yeah just inline. Inline delegation. Like maybe that's even like a new UX pattern. I don't even know. Right. That you could build into like these different tools Subjects to investigate Christopher Alexander's pattern language applied to digital spaces Interesting. Black Mountain College as a model for the stadium Stadium is a physical space we have in Toronto Authorless media as a concept how Shenzhen's hardware ecosystem actually works things to write and publish that'd be useful Context architecture essay the computer as a place Software will become fashion what Toronto theory actually is Editorial thinking zine conversations to have this is interesting. These are real people Aaron Stadium workshop host about becoming an anchor of technical programming this is a space we have in Toronto Tarun again another person program about making program the flagship series Steph Ango Obsidian CEO about the vault as a place and so this is like yeah, this is crazy. It's suggesting people I should meet. Right? Top five high impact do now build the graduate command or do a manual Weekly idea review
- [46:18]
A
this is crazy, dude. This is actually crazy. Like and the fact that it's in plain text and it just not be. It's not. There's no images. It doesn't make it easy to read. But I kind of like it because it's. It's like dressed down. You know what I mean? Yeah.
- [46:36]
B
I mean I like that aesthetic because I'm a nerd, but you could just say, you know, you could. You could just say obviously you could just say can you turn this into a beautiful readable HTML file that is on my desktop? This is hard to read and it's going to do that. Right. So I mean if you don't. That says, if you don't like that, just do it however you want to do it. You know what I mean? I like it like this in this kind of like, this esthetic. But, yeah, that's how you can move out of reflection. And of course, you know, of course we could also say, like, here, you know, if we don't. If we don't want to do this, we could also say, like, it recommended that slash graduate command. So I could just say, build the slash graduate command. Right. Which is interesting.
- [47:22]
A
And is that how you started building a lot of your commands? Like, it. It sort of. It started suggesting it, and you're like, just go, build it.
- [47:30]
B
Well, I started off actually, like, building them myself. Like, I'm like, oh, trying to think about commands myself. But then, yeah, I said, I started asking the agent, like, well, wait a second. What commands do you think would be interesting? And just. And this might be useful. Another thing that I'd like to do is I like to move to, like, higher levels of abstraction when I'm using an LLM. What I mean by that is I could say, like, oh, make a command that tells me what I should focus on each day. And that's. That's like a command that I thought of. But when I. When I. Another thing you can do is you can step back and I can say, based on my Obsidian vault and what you know about me, form an understanding of what you think my level of. Understand, like, where you think my skill level is in terms of a person and the projects that I'm working on. And based on that, suggest the kinds of commands I should use that would take me from the level I'm at to a higher level. Right. Get, like, you know, get it to suggest the commands for me instead of me suggesting the commands, and I could pick between them. So look at this. This is. This is. It was. This was the agent's idea based on what it read in my vault, based on the notes I'm taking. Right. So let's see what this is. Daily note idea Extractor ideas, insights and original thinking accumulate in detail and daily notes, but rarely graduate into standalone notes where it can. Where they can compound through backlinks. This command scans recent daily notes, surfaces the best candidates, and helps decide what to promote into, like, an idea or something. Right? Sure. So this is how it's going to work. It scans all the recent daily notes. It cross references with the existing vault. It presents candidates. It graduates selected ideas. If. If creating a new standalone note, create the note in the Vault root, write the note as a mini essay or working document that captures the core claim or question context from the daily note where it originated, connections to other vaults, notes as backlinks. Now all this stuff, like it captures the core claimer question. You might be looking at this and think like, okay, this is just the text that the agent generated. And it is. But also it hits differently for me because I know like, I'm writing a lot about these things. I know, I know like even like the mini essay thing, these are words that mean specific things to me, which is just so, it's just so crazy. It's very contextual. I know what it's talking about because I spend a lot of time in this tool and I spend a lot of time writing. So, yeah, created. And it's going to create that command. Right. And it's like that's, that's nuts because I'm just going about making notes and I have this parallel agent that is looking at my notes and giving me ideas on how I can improve my workflow, improve my life. And then, and then not only can it just suggest it, just build the thing and it's done and we have it right here, slash, graduate. I could just hit it and it's going to run. That's crazy.
- [50:29]
A
If, if I'm open, AI or anthropic, I'm buying Obsidian. Right. Because it's the missing link.
- [50:40]
B
Yeah, it's nuts.
- [50:41]
A
It's the missing link. Why? The fact that there are people like, you've sold me on this. By the way. I've downloaded Obsidian. I think it's a free tool, right?
- [50:50]
B
Yes, it is. Yeah.
- [50:51]
A
It's open sourced. I've downloaded it. But I have not created my vault because I wanted you, vin, to take me through. I knew that this was gonna be great. I knew that I would go through this. This actually exceeded my expectations. Like, this is the fact. It makes no sense.
- [51:15]
B
It makes no sense.
- [51:17]
A
The fact like that if you are serious about using LLMs to take your ideas and get the most out of them, if you're serious about building what people are calling a personal OS and you are not using a centralized note taking tool like this.
- [51:39]
B
Yeah.
- [51:39]
A
That uses markdown as the foundation, then you are not using LLMs properly.
- [51:47]
B
Yeah. Or at least not at the limit.
- [51:50]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're not getting the most out of it.
- [51:53]
B
Yeah.
- [51:53]
A
You're not getting the most out of it. So I think what's difficult about this is that it does require a lot of time and to actually set it up. Properly, it requires like. Yeah, I mean, it takes a lot of time. And the UI is in. Is so daunting in the sense that it's a blank canvas and it's not like, hey, you should like, write your preferences over here. Or, you know, you kind of just have to. You have to come up with these ideas yourselves.
- [52:26]
B
Yes, but that's still so amazing, right? Because, I mean, even when we work with other humans, we have to find a way to explain things to them. And I just think it's so cool that now we can work with these agents and we still have to explain things to them, but we only need to explain them once, because once we get it down on into a file, we can always reference that file, that explanation of a project or a preference or anything, and it's always there and you can pass it in.
- [52:53]
A
Yeah. A file is like essentially perfect. A perfect memory.
- [52:58]
B
Yes.
- [52:58]
A
Right. Human beings have memories. Like, we recall things.
- [53:02]
B
Yes.
- [53:02]
A
But there's tons of studies that show that what we remember, in fact, is completely different than reality. For example, when we went and got our. That haircut in Mississauga, I could have thought that I had the best haircut. You know, that's what my memory remembers. It was a great haircut, but who knows? It could have been the worst haircut I had ever gotten. Now, Obsidian, or whatever tool you end up using, if I had written the memory, the file, the markdown file, is perfect so that when I link that or I recall it, it is going to give me a perfect data point. And the other thing about these files is that you hope, well, they're not biased, basically. They're as biased as the human being is in terms of writing the reflections.
- [53:59]
B
Yes.
- [54:00]
A
At that moment in time.
- [54:01]
B
Yes. It's crazy, man. And, yeah, it's just crazy. And there's all. There's all of these different aspects to it. There's the privacy of it and what that means. There's the power of it. The fact that now you can just work with these computers in natural language and just delegate to them. There's the fact that there's people like me that are. That are using these tools and trying to figure out how to delegate stuff to agents in this way. There's people that are like me, that are even more hardcore in different ways and pushing them. And I just think it's such a crazy time to be alive because I think we are potentially watching a fundamental shift in the human relationship to computers. And it's just. I'm just really happy to be alive while this is happening. And I'm curious, how is this all going to unravel?
- [54:51]
A
Well, what's cool about this is 99.99% of people are not going to spend the time to actually set up something like this and make it a part of their daily lives. And the alpha, so to speak, is in terms of leading a more productive, happier, healthier, better, more money making career. Is in, in, in using something like this with an LLM, I think so I'm not saying download Obsidian today and I have no affiliation or whatever with them, but I'm saying like, pick a. It sounds like what we should all be doing. And I'm, I'm talking, I'm giving myself this, this advice is like, there's no excuse anymore for me not to be writing down and reflecting.
- [55:43]
B
Yes.
- [55:43]
A
Into markdown files.
- [55:45]
B
Yes.
- [55:45]
A
In a world that, where LLMs use markdown files is the oxygen.
- [55:50]
B
Yes.
- [55:52]
A
Like, people think tokens are the oxygen.
- [55:54]
B
Yes.
- [55:55]
A
But they're not.
- [55:56]
B
Yes.
- [55:57]
A
The markdown files are the memories. Like think about what a human being is.
- [56:02]
B
Yes.
- [56:02]
A
You know, is a human being the, the energy of a human being or is it the memories of, you know, what we recall? You know, I mean, that's like a philosophical question and maybe it's a bit, you know, a bit of both, but it's, you know, I think that there's something really, really fascinating about MD files as an underrated about them in order to, to have a true computer experience. And in today's day and age.
- [56:37]
B
Yeah, there's definitely something going on here. Some fundamental shift.
- [56:41]
A
Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. And like, I have bad my work, you know, I'm learning in real time. Right. Like, and I, I don't have the right vocabulary to even explain this.
- [56:50]
B
Yes. And neither do I, man. Neither do I. I'm trying to, I'm trying to figure it out in real time. That's, that's why I think, like, I know I show something and, and for me, I'll do something or I'll see something. And my friends are like, they kind of laugh because I'll just be sitting at my computer just tripping out. And I think it's because I really like computers. And I cannot believe that this is possible. I cannot believe that I can just be making notes on my computer like I have been since I was a kid. And then all of a sudden this agent can scan through it and build things because of it and like connect patterns that I could never see. It's nuts, man. It's nuts. And at the root of it. You're right. It's just a collection of interrelated markdown files.
- [57:36]
A
Yeah.
- [57:36]
B
Cool, man.
- [57:37]
A
I appreciate you. I don't know if you can see my mind, but my mind is blown right now.
- [57:42]
B
Thank God.
- [57:43]
A
Yeah, Yeah.
- [57:44]
B
I wanted to do right by you. I also just, like, I say this every time, man, but I'm just going to keep always saying it to you all the time. I really, really, really, really appreciate everything that you do. I think your pattern recognition and your pattern matching is like, like, really underrated. I think there's a lot of things that you do that I don't think it's difficult to see if you're not really paying attention. I just want to say, like, thank you for. For everything that you do. You're always putting on, like, new voices on your show. I see it. I really appreciate it. And it's just been. It's an honor to know you. And yeah, just thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for everything, man.
- [58:18]
A
I appreciate you, Vin, You're a legend. I'll include links for where to follow criminally under followed Internet Vin on x on his YouTube show podcast in the show notes and description. You can go and check him out there. People, please play with some of these tools and let me know what you think. Let Vin know what you think, please. And Vin, I will beg you to come back on the show another time, and I hope you come back on
- [58:54]
B
again for sure, man. Thank you.
- [58:56]
A
Thank you.