idea-to-mvp-vault

An Obsidian vault template for taking a product idea from "huh, what if" to a validated MVP spec — without losing the reasoning along the way.

It is opinionated. Every project gets the same six stages, every research document starts with its conclusion, and every decision gets written down so future-you knows why.

No plugins are required. Everything works with Obsidian's built-in Templates and Daily Notes.

Who this is for

Solo builders and small teams who keep starting projects, keep researching the same things twice, and keep forgetting why they dropped the last one.

If you have ever opened a folder from three months ago and had no idea what the plan was — this is for that.

Structure

00-Inbox/          Raw ideas and clippings. Emptied weekly.
10-Projects/       The center of gravity.
   _Template/         Skeleton for a new project. Copy it, do not edit it.
   01-Project-A/
      00-Project-A.md    <- overview, hypotheses, current state
      01-Research/       market & growth, competitors, tech, users
      02-MVP/            MVP definition, feature spec
      03-Wireframes/     user flow, screen design
      04-Tech/           architecture, decision log
      05-Log/            progress log
      99-Assets/         images, PDFs
   02-Project-B/
20-Library/        Shared material across projects (Dev / Market / Design / Papers)
30-Topics/         Topic MOCs that cut across projects
40-Daily/          Daily notes
90-Templates/      Templates
99-Attachments/    Shared attachments

The numbering keeps folders in a fixed order and gives every note a stable address. Projects, research and product docs are separated so a project can die without taking its reusable knowledge with it.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/YOUR-NAME/idea-to-mvp-vault.git
cd idea-to-mvp-vault

Open the folder in Obsidian as a vault. The .obsidian folder ships with sane defaults already set: template folder, daily note folder, attachment folder, and _Template hidden from search.

Then start a project:

./new-project.sh "My Project"

That copies 10-Projects/_Template, assigns the next number automatically (01-, 02- …), fills in today's date, and replaces {{PROJECT}} with the real name. The overview file is renamed to the project so search finds it first.

No terminal? Duplicate 10-Projects/_Template in Finder, rename it 01-My Project, and find-replace {{PROJECT}} yourself.

The workflow

Idea                (00-Inbox, "Idea Capture" template)
   |  survives a 30-minute sanity check
Create project  ->  write the overview: the problem + 3 hypotheses
   |
01-Research         market & growth -> competitors -> users -> tech
   |  "this is doable"
02-MVP              one question to validate + success criteria + what to cut
   |
03-Wireframes       user flow -> screen design
   |
04-Tech             stack and architecture — write down every decision
   |
05-Log              one line a day

Every research document starts with its conclusion. Do not gather everything and then conclude. Write your current best guess at the top first, then let the evidence rewrite it. A document whose conclusion never changed is a document you did not actually research.

Conventions

Frontmatter is not decoration — it is what makes the vault queryable later.

Always fill in project:. It is the axis every later search and Dataview query hangs off.
status for projects: exploring / active / paused / dropped / shipped
stage for projects: idea / research / mvp-design / building / validating
Never delete a dead project. Set status: dropped and write why in the overview. That paragraph is what saves the next project.
Tags mark the kind of note (#research/market, #mvp, #idea). Subjects are links, not tags.

Templates

Cmd/Ctrl+P -> Templates: Insert template

Template	Use it when
Idea Capture	an idea shows up and you want to kill or keep it in 30 minutes
Dev Reference	you are filing something technical worth reusing
Market Reference	you are filing a market report, and want to record how much to trust it
Topic MOC	a theme starts appearing in more than one project
Permanent Note	you want to keep an idea in your own words, not the author's
Literature Note / Paper Note	an article or a paper
Weekly Review	end of the week
Daily Note	automatic, via the daily note command

Where does this material go?

Material	Location
Research that only serves one project	that project's `01-Research`
A dev reference several projects will want	`20-Library/Dev`
Market reports and statistics	`20-Library/Market`
UI you want to steal from	`20-Library/Design`
Not sure yet	`00-Inbox`

Wireframing

ASCII boxes — there is a worked example in 03-Wireframes/Screen Design. Fastest by far, and it survives in plain text.
Mermaid — for flows and state machines. Obsidian renders it natively; 03-Wireframes/User Flow ships with working diagrams.
Excalidraw — install the plugin when you genuinely need fidelity. Keep the .excalidraw files in the project's 99-Assets and embed them.

Optional plugins

None are required, but these are where the vault gets better:

Dataview — turn the project table on Home into a live query
Templater — auto-apply templates per folder, richer variables than the core plugin
Excalidraw — wireframes and diagrams
Kanban — read the feature spec as a board
Obsidian Git — version the vault, which you should be doing anyway

Prior art

This borrows from several well-known systems rather than inventing one:

PARA (Tiago Forte) — the projects / library split
Zettelkasten — literature notes vs. permanent notes, and MOCs as entry points
Johnny.Decimal — the numbered folders and stable addresses
ADR (Architecture Decision Record) — the format of 04-Tech/Decision Log

The part that is specific to this vault is the six-stage project skeleton and the "conclusion first" rule for research documents.

Credits

Originally built by Banal while running actual projects out of it, then stripped of its contents and released.

License

Public domain — The Unlicense. No attribution, no conditions, no copyright holder. Fork it, gut it, rename everything, sell it. The credit line above is a courtesy, not a requirement. It is a starting point, not a doctrine.