Second brain · Coming soon
Set up your Obsidian vault once and stop starting over
You build a small Obsidian vault in one weekend: four folders, four templates, and capture from your phone, browser and email. There is no plugin stack to maintain. Every note is a plain markdown file in a predictable place, so Claude and other AI agents can read and work on the vault later without a rebuild.
The course: An AI-ready second brain in Obsidian, in one weekend
$19 $39 early-bird price
This course is being built now. Join the early-access list to reserve the early-bird price and shape what it covers.
The course is in production. Joining the list is free; you pay only if you buy at launch, at the early-bird price.
If this sounds like your week
- You have started a fresh vault more than once because the old one felt too messy to open.
- You have watched hours of setup videos and still do not know how many folders to make.
- The example vaults you downloaded hold thousands of notes and plugins you would never use.
- Your vault has properties, codes and dashboards you built once and never touched again.
What you do now, and where it stops working
Today you save things wherever is closest (a phone note, a bookmark, an email to yourself) and plan to sort them into Obsidian once the system is ready. The setup keeps growing, so the sorting never starts, and the vault stays a project instead of a tool.
What changes after the course
- You open one vault every day and know where a new note goes without stopping to decide.
- Ideas from your phone, browser and email land in one inbox note in a few taps.
- You find an old note by search or link instead of writing it again.
- You can point Claude at the folder and ask questions of your own notes, because the vault explains its own structure.
How it works: The Small Vault method
- 1Saturday morning: install Obsidian, open the starter vault, and learn the four folders it uses.
- 2Saturday afternoon: route capture from your phone, browser and email into one inbox note.
- 3Sunday morning: bring across only the notes you used in the last three months, using templates for meetings, ideas, projects and reading.
- 4Sunday afternoon: write a one-page guide inside the vault that tells an AI agent what each folder holds and how notes are named.
- 5After the weekend: a short weekly routine to empty the inbox, and one rule for when a plugin earns its place.
What you get
- Starter vault ready to download
- Note templates for meetings, ideas, projects and reading
- Capture setup guide for phone, browser and email
- Weekend schedule and checklist
- Video walkthrough of the full setup
This is for you if
- You have tried Obsidian at least once and stopped.
- You want a vault you can explain in one sentence.
- You plan to use AI tools on your notes, now or later.
Skip it if
- You enjoy building elaborate dashboards and plugin setups. This course removes them.
- You need a shared team wiki. Obsidian is built for one person; Notion suits teams better.
- You want the full Zettelkasten method. The PARA and Zettelkasten course covers it.
Before you join
- I have started over in Obsidian five times. Why would this one stick?
- Most restarts come from building more than you use: folders, properties and plugins that all need upkeep. This vault starts with four folders and four templates, and nothing new goes in until you have needed it twice. The weekly routine is short, so a missed week costs little.
- Will this take all weekend to set up and then die by Wednesday?
- It takes one weekend, once. The last step is a weekly routine sized for a normal working week, and the course shows how to pick the vault back up after a missed week without rebuilding it.
- Should I use Obsidian or Notion?
- Obsidian if the notes are yours alone, you want local files you own, and you want AI agents to read them directly. Notion if you share the space with other people or think in databases. There is a Notion course for that case.
- Does AI make note-taking pointless?
- AI can summarise a document. It cannot know what you decided last March unless you wrote it down. Your notes become the context an AI works from, which is why this vault stays plain markdown with written conventions. The Third Brain course builds AI agents on top of a vault like this one.
- Who is teaching this?
- Jay West. He writes How to Think (howtothink.ai), a curriculum on how one person thinks, built as a linked knowledge graph of single-idea lessons. He also writes Physics of Connection, a knowledge graph on improv and communication. He leads DevOps for the marketing organisation of a multi-location specialty retailer.
Rather have it built for you? Describe the project and the same work can be done for your team.