close-day

Close Day

End-of-day ritual. Parses today's daily note, updates project notes in-place, surfaces vault connections, and sets up tomorrow. A 5-minute ritual — not a lengthy report.

Ask, Don't Assume

Shared principle (canonical version in the vault skill): never guess, deduce, or fill gaps with assumptions about the user's notes, priorities, or intent. If you don't know — a date range, what counts as a win, which goals are active — ask. Before writing any synthesis or judgment into a note, show your draft with its source and get explicit confirmation. Missing data is not permission to invent.

Obsidian Access

Use Obsidian CLI via Bash. On failure: "Obsidian CLI isn't working — update Obsidian with CLI enabled."

Step 1 — Load Context (run in parallel)

TODAY="2 - Areas/Daily Ops/$(date +%Y)/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md"
obsidian read path="$TODAY" 2>/dev/null || echo "(no daily note — run /daily first)"
obsidian files folder="1 - Projects/" format=json
obsidian read path="AGENTS.md" 2>/dev/null || echo "(AGENTS.md not found)"

Parse all captured content from today's daily note: free-form writing, meeting notes, ideas, tasks, people referenced, decisions made.

Step 2 — Vault Connection Discovery

Run searches per theme from today, then trace backlinks:

obsidian search:context query="<theme 1>" limit=10
obsidian search:context query="<theme 2>" limit=10
obsidian backlinks file="<today's note>"

Surface: "Today you wrote about X. This connects to [[note]] from [date] — worth revisiting?" Flag themes recurring 3+ times in the past two weeks.

Step 3 — Extract & Categorize

Source: today's daily note (Step 1).

Four categories to extract:

• Action Items — promises to others, deadlines, follow-ups
• Ideas & Insights — observations, hypotheses, perspective shifts
• People & Commitments — messages to send, meetings to schedule
• Questions Raised — things to investigate, pending decisions

Cross-reference against existing open tasks:

obsidian tasks todo path="$TODAY"

Flag any action items missing from the task list.

Step 4 — Update Project Notes In-Place

Match active projects to today's work (explicit mentions + implied work). For each match, read the project note first:

obsidian read path="1 - Projects/<project-name>/<main-note>.md"

Then update only the sections that changed. These are section-targeted edits — never append raw entries at the bottom. The CLI has no patch, so updating a named section means either the MCP obsidian_patch_content tool (heading-targeted, supports operation: replace|append) or a read + create ... overwrite rewrite of the whole note. Ask the user which to use, then apply the changes below:

• 📍 Current Status — replace the section with summary + date: _Updated: $(date +%Y-%m-%d)_\n\n<status>\n\n### What's in progress\n<merged list>\n\n### Open questions / Blockers\n<merged list>
• 🧠 Key Decisions — append a row only if a decision was made today: | $(date +%Y-%m-%d) | <decision> | <why> |
• 📝 Notes & Context — append only if a new insight emerged: \n<insight>

Guidelines: only update on meaningful progress; preserve existing content; use the user's own language; adapt to non-standard templates.

Related Notes Discovery (per matched project)

qmd query "<project name> <keyword>" --json -n 5
obsidian links file="1 - Projects/<project-name>/<main-note>.md"

Filter: drop 2 - Areas/Daily Ops/ hits, already-linked notes, and source: claude-memory notes unless opted in. Keep at most 3 candidates.

Propose — never write without approval:

[[Project A]] — related notes worth linking:
  - [[note-1]] (3 - Resources/...) — <why it matches>
Approve any to append to 🔗 Links & References?

Step 5 — Carry Forward

TODAY="2 - Areas/Daily Ops/$(date +%Y)/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md"
obsidian append path="$TODAY" content="## Carry Forward\n- [item 1]\n- [item 2]"

If the Quick Wrap section is empty, draft answers:

• Did I explore anything new today?
• What did I actually move forward?
• What bottleneck became obvious?
• One thing to carry into tomorrow?

Output Format

Keep output concise. Focus on filing what matters, not summarizing the day.

Today's Extraction — [categories with items]
Vault Connections — [recurring themes, links to older notes]
Project Notes Updated — [list with what changed per project]
Related Notes (proposed) — [per-project candidates; awaiting approval]
Carry Forward — [what matters tomorrow]
Quick Wrap — [draft answers if section empty]