daily

Daily Startup

Structured morning ritual that creates periodic notes, surfaces what carried forward from yesterday, checks the inbox, and locks in today's focus.

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.

Step 1 — Create Periodic Notes (no confirmation needed)

Performance rule: batch all existence checks in parallel, then batch all template fetches in parallel, then create. Minimize round-trips.

Get today's path and check if the daily note exists:

TODAY="2 - Areas/Daily Ops/$(date +%Y)/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md"
obsidian read path="$TODAY" 2>/dev/null

If missing, render from template and create:

obsidian template:read name="Daily Notes" resolve title="$TODAY"
obsidian create path="$TODAY" content="$PROCESSED_TEMPLATE"

Template variable substitution — if resolve doesn't substitute all variables, replace manually:

• {{date}} → YYYY-MM-DD
• {{title}} → note title
• {{week}} → W05
• {{month}} → January
• {{quarter}} → Q1
• {{year}} → YYYY

NEVER create empty notes. If template fetch fails, report the error.

Run these checks in parallel based on today's date, then create all missing notes:

Period	Condition	Path	Template
Daily	always	2 - Areas/Daily Ops/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD.md	Daily Notes
Weekly	Monday	2 - Areas/Daily Ops/Weekly/M - Month YYYY/YYYY-Www.md	Weekly Planning
Monthly	1st of month	2 - Areas/Goals/Monthly/M - Month YYYY.md	Monthly Goals
Quarterly	Jan 1, Apr 1, Jul 1, Oct 1	2 - Areas/Goals/Quarterly/Quaterly Goals - QN YYYY.md	Quarterly Goals

Note: The quarterly FOLDER is Quarterly/ but the FILE name uses the typo Quaterly Goals - QN YYYY.md — preserve this to match existing vault structure.

Step 2 — Yesterday's Carry-Forward

Always check carry-forward before setting today's priorities.

Read yesterday's daily note:

YESTERDAY=$(date -v-1d +%Y/%Y-%m-%d)
obsidian read path="2 - Areas/Daily Ops/$YESTERDAY.md" 2>/dev/null

Extract any items marked "Carry Forward → Tomorrow" or similar. Prepend them to today's note immediately:

obsidian prepend path="$TODAY" content="**Carry forward from yesterday:**\n- [ ] Item 1\n- [ ] Item 2"

These are the first candidates for today's focus.

Step 3 — Gather Context (run in parallel)

# Inbox count
obsidian files folder="0 - Inbox/" format=json

# Active projects
obsidian base:query path="MOCs/Active Projects.base" format=json 2>/dev/null || \
  obsidian files folder="1 - Projects/" format=json

# Open tasks (from today's daily note; daily flag needs the Daily Notes plugin)
obsidian tasks todo path="$TODAY"

Step 4 — Focus Interview (interactive)

Ask via AskUserQuestion with multiSelect:

"Which projects are you focusing on today?" (list active projects from Step 3)

Then a single-select follow-up:

"What's the single most important thing to finish today?"

Step 5 — Update Daily Note

Fill today's Focus and Carry Forward sections. The CLI has no patch, so it cannot edit a named section in place. Choose based on the note:

• If the section is empty or appending is acceptable, write with append/prepend:

  obsidian append path="$TODAY" content="..."
  

• If the content must land in or replace a specific section, ask the user: use the MCP obsidian_patch_content tool (heading-targeted), or recreate the note via obsidian read path="$TODAY" + obsidian create path="$TODAY" content="..." overwrite.

Report

After completion, tell the user:

• Which periodic notes were created (daily / weekly / monthly / quarterly)
• Inbox count (and flag if > 10 items — might need an ingest session)
• Carry-forward items surfaced from yesterday
• Confirmed today's focus