Imported from zainibeats/homelab (
automation/ai-stack/context/tasknotes-obsidian/AGENTS.md). Install upstream withnpx skills add zainibeats/homelab --skill tasknotes-obsidian. Copyright stays with the author.
Design Document: Obsidian Second Brain
Overview
This document outlines the architectural understanding and tagging strategy for the Obsidian vault located at /mnt/backup/syncthing/notes/obsidian-tasknotes. This vault serves as a "Second Brain," acting as a central repository for knowledge, project management, and personal development. Task management within the vault is handled by the TaskNotes plugin, which manages its own TaskNotes/ directory at the vault root. For task schema, CLI, and API details, see the tasknotes skill — don't duplicate that reference here.
Organizational Structure
The vault follows the PARA method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives), providing a clear distinction between active work and long-term reference material:
- 0-Inbox: Raw, unprocessed notes and initial captures.
- 1-Projects: Active endeavors with a specific goal and end date (e.g., Learning Goals, Shopping).
- 2-Areas: Ongoing responsibilities and domains of interest that require long-term maintenance (e.g., Dev, Education, Homelab).
- 3-Resources: Collections of interests, research, and reference material (e.g., Blog notes, Career paths, CCNA, Prompt Library).
- 4-Archives: Completed projects, inactive areas, and historical references.
TaskNotes/ sits alongside these five folders at the vault root — it is not a numbered PARA folder and is auto-managed by the plugin, not manually organized:
- TaskNotes/Tasks/: individual task notes (one file per task), created here automatically regardless of which PARA area they relate to.
- TaskNotes/Views/: Bases-powered view definitions (Task List, Kanban, Calendar, Mini Calendar) — plain
.basefiles, safe to inspect but not meant to be reorganized into PARA.
Task Model (TaskNotes) — vault-specific notes only
This vault runs TaskNotes on default settings — default statuses (open/in-progress/done), default priorities (low/normal/high), default tags: [task]. Don't assume custom values; check an existing task file if in doubt. Full frontmatter schema, required fields, recurrence, and dependency syntax are covered by the tasknotes skill.
Note on dateCreated/dateModified: this vault's TaskNotes install writes these as full ISO 8601 timestamps with timezone offset (e.g. 2026-05-31T10:49:12.895-07:00), not bare YYYY-MM-DD. Match this format on any task you create or edit, even if other guidance suggests otherwise.
PARA relationship: a task's physical location does not need to match its PARA folder. All tasks live under TaskNotes/Tasks/; the projects: field (a [[wikilink]] to the relevant note in 1-Projects/ or 2-Areas/) is what ties a task back into PARA. Don't move task files into PARA folders manually.
Tag synergy with the Graph View strategy
Task tags: and note tags: are the same underlying field. A task tagged with one of the granular topic tags from the Tagging Strategy below (e.g. #terraform, #aws) automatically shows up in that topic's thematic cluster in Graph View and is filterable as a task by that same tag — no extra bookkeeping needed. When tagging a task, prefer the existing granular topic tags over inventing task-only tags, so this overlap keeps working.
Tagging Strategy & Graph View Goals
The primary objective for implementing tags is to enhance the Graph View to reveal hidden relationships and structural clusters that folder-based organization alone cannot show.
Tagging Format
Tags should be implemented in the YAML frontmatter using the tags: key (e.g., tags: [aws, terraform]), following the format used at the top of AGENTS.md. Do not use hashtags within the body text unless referring to them as examples.
Core Principles
- Thematic Clustering: Tags should be used to group notes into distinct thematic "islands" in the graph view (e.g., grouping all AI-related notes together, even if they reside in different folders like
Dev/ideasandResources/blog notes). - Granularity: Use specific technology and topic-based tags rather than broad categories. Instead of just
#dev, use#terraform,#ansible,#docker, and#kubernetes. - Multi-dimensional Linking (Multi-tagging): Notes should often carry multiple tags to represent cross-cutting relationships. A note on "Automating AWS with Terraform" should contain both
#awsand#terraformto ensure it appears in both thematic clusters in the graph. - No Entity Tracking (Current Scope): The current focus is on topical/technological themes rather than tracking specific entities like people or hardware components.
Identified Primary Themes for Tagging
Based on initial inspection, the following domains are prime candidates for granular tagging:
- AI & LLMs:
#ai,#llm,#prompt-engineering,#agentic-workflows. - DevOps & Infrastructure as Code (IaC):
#terraform,#ansible,#docker,#kubernetes,#ci-cd. - Networking & Homelab:
#networking,#homelab,#netbird,#vpn,#rsync,#proxmox. - Cloud Services:
#aws,#oci. - Career & Learning:
#career-development,#learning-python,#ccna,#wgu. - Linux/System Administration:
#linux,#fedora,#kde,#bash.
Future Evolution
As the vault grows, this design document will be updated to reflect new themes, shifts in organizational methodology, or changes in how information is synthesized.
Rules to follow
- You may use the printf bash command to add/edit tags
- Always keep your responses concise to the user
- Ask clarifying questions if the user's intent is ambiguous
- If something, such as editing a shell script that is being used as a test or tool, would be better off edited to your preference, go ahead and change it. For example, if you think the script can be more efficient with a different approach, go ahead and change that script for yourself. Do not make entire new scripts.
- Frontmatter-only edits to a task (status, priority, due date) are routine; don't rewrite a task's body or delete a task file without asking first.
- Don't invent status or priority values for a task — match whatever the vault is already using.
- The MCP server should be tested for interacting with TaskNotes before any other method.
- For full TaskNotes CLI/API/schema details, see the
tasknotesskill rather than duplicating that reference here.
