kb-ingest

KB Ingest

Pipeline for bringing new content into an Obsidian knowledge base vault with proper structure, frontmatter, and linking.

Content types

PDF book ingestion

1. Convert PDF to markdown (via Marker plugin with Mistral OCR, or Claude reads and restructures)
2. Create a parent book note under 01-books/<book-name>/ with metadata:

   ---
   title: "Book Title"
   author: "Author Name"
   isbn: "978-..."
   type: book
   topics:
     - relevant-topic
   date-added: 2026-03-22
   status: ingested
   ---
   

3. Create one note per chapter, linked from the parent note: [[Book - Chapter N Title]]
4. Each chapter note includes frontmatter linking back:

   ---
   title: "Book - Chapter N Title"
   type: chapter
   parent: "[[Book]]"
   topics:
     - relevant-topic
   date-added: 2026-03-22
   ---
   

5. Tag sections with the vault's topic taxonomy

Web article ingestion

1. Use defuddle to extract clean markdown from URL
2. Create note under 03-articles/ with metadata:

   ---
   title: "Article Title"
   author: "Author Name"
   source: "https://..."
   type: article
   topics:
     - relevant-topic
   date-added: 2026-03-22
   ---
   

3. Tag with appropriate topics from the vault taxonomy

Personal note creation

1. Create note under 02-notes/ with metadata:

   ---
   title: "Note Title"
   type: note
   topics:
     - relevant-topic
   date-added: 2026-03-22
   ---
   

2. Add [[wikilinks]] to related vault content

Existing markdown import

1. Copy markdown into the appropriate vault folder based on content type
2. Add frontmatter if missing (title, type, topics, date-added at minimum)
3. Convert any markdown links to internal content into [[wikilinks]]

Commands

# Create a note with content and frontmatter
obsidian create name="Note Title" content="---\ntitle: ...\n---\n\n# Content" path="01-books/DDIA/DDIA - Chapter 1.md" silent

# Use a template
obsidian create name="Note Title" template="book" silent

# Extract article content from URL
defuddle <url>

# Append content to existing note
obsidian append file="Book Parent Note" content="\n- [[Book - Chapter 5 Title]]"

Conventions

• Every note must have frontmatter with at minimum: title, type, topics, date-added
• Use the property schema — type is one of: book, chapter, note, article, reference, moc
• Topics use kebab-case — e.g. distributed-systems, event-driven, domain-driven-design
• Books get one parent note + one note per chapter — parent links to all chapters, chapters link back via parent property
• Wikilinks for internal, markdown links for external — internal vault references use [[wikilinks]], external URLs use [text](url)
• Folder placement by type — books in 01-books/<name>/, notes in 02-notes/, articles in 03-articles/, references in 04-references/
• Use silent flag when creating notes to avoid switching focus in Obsidian