Research vault starter

This is an Obsidian research notebook pre-wired for Claude Code, built for day-to-day research work in astrophysics. You get a ready-made structure for journals, papers, projects, and tasks — plus a set of Claude skills that import papers, survey the literature, and answer questions from your own notes.

Setup takes about 15 minutes. No programming knowledge needed.

1. Install Obsidian

Download it from obsidian.md/download — Windows, macOS, and Linux are all supported. Install it like any other app.

2. Install Claude Code

Follow the instructions at claude.com/claude-code. On Windows, either the native installer or WSL works — for the basic setup it makes no difference.

3. Get the vault

This step uses git — if it isn't installed, get it from git-scm.com (on Windows: Git for Windows), or use the ZIP fallback below.

In a terminal (on Windows: PowerShell, or the WSL shell if you installed Claude Code there), run:

git clone https://github.com/ExpAstroWIS/vault-starter.git my-vault

The repository is public — no GitHub account or sign-in is needed to clone it.

This creates a my-vault folder — rename it to whatever you like, but do it now, not later: parts of the advanced setup record the folder's location, and moving or renaming it afterwards means redoing them (see docs/SETUP-ADVANCED.md).

No git? Downloading the repository as a ZIP works too, but you lose the easy update path — see docs/UPDATING.md before choosing that route.

4. Open it in Obsidian

In Obsidian, choose Open folder as vault and pick the folder you just cloned. If Obsidian asks whether to trust the vault's author, choose Trust author and enable plugins.

The vault relies on a handful of free community plugins — they power the task tracking, search, and paper views. Their settings ship with the vault, but the plugins themselves are installed from Obsidian's built-in browser, a one-time five-minute step: follow GETTING-STARTED.md → Install the community plugins.

Then open obsidian/Home.md — the vault's dashboard — and pin it: right-click its tab and choose Pin, so it stays put as you click around.

5. Personalize it

Open the Claude desktop app and start a Claude Code session in your my-vault folder. (No desktop app? A terminal works the same: cd my-vault, then claude.)

Then type /setup. Claude interviews you (name, institution, research areas), fills in the vault's placeholders, and tells you what works right away.

What you get

Eleven skills, invoked by typing /name in Claude Code. Most work immediately; a few need the optional "machinery" layer (a Python environment and an ADS key) described in docs/SETUP-ADVANCED.md.

Skill	What it does	Needs advanced setup?
/setup	One-time personalization interview (run this first)	No
/weekly-review	Dated review of what changed in your vault this week	No
/note2project	Turn a free-form todo note into a project with task notes	No
/digest	Synthesize notes, meetings, or projects into a structured digest	No
/notebook-maintenance	Sweep new/edited notes and route them to the right skill	No
/deadlines	Refresh proposal/grant deadline tasks from the web	No
/newpaper	Import a paper (PDF + note + BibTeX) from an ADS/arXiv id or DOI	Yes
/arxiv-digest	Survey recent arXiv/ADS literature, ranked by relevance to your projects	Yes
/citations	Check ADS for new citations to your own papers	Yes
/export	Turn vault content into slides, PDF, DOCX, email, or WhatsApp text	Yes
/ask	Answer research questions from your own notes and papers (semantic search)	Yes

Next

Read GETTING-STARTED.md — the daily workflow: journal notes, importing papers, projects and tasks, clipping pages from the web, and talking to Claude in the vault.

License

MIT — use it, adapt it, share it.