Obsidian Second Brain Template

A personal "second brain" Obsidian vault template — folder structure, frontmatter conventions, 20 ready Templater templates, weekly/monthly review rituals, and an AI-context starter pack for feeding stable context into LLM sessions.

Built and used by @IgorKramar. Public template; the live private vault is separate. Improvements occasionally backported here by hand.

Why this exists

Most "second brain" advice is either too philosophical (Zettelkasten purity) or too narrow (one specific app's tutorial). This template is opinionated middle ground: enough structure that you start using it on day one, light enough that you don't drown in meta-work.

What's inside

.
├── 00-Inbox/                # fleeting notes, ideas, quick captures
├── 01-Daily/                # daily / weekly / monthly notes (Periodic Notes)
├── 10-Areas/                # ongoing life domains (work, health, family, finance, …)
├── 20-Projects/             # things with a deadline or done-state
├── 30-Resources/            # Zettelkasten zone — atomic notes + topical MOCs
├── 40-People/               # CRM-style notes on people
├── 50-Reference/            # cheatsheets, snippets, recipes
├── 90-Archive/              # closed and put away
├── _ai-context/             # starter packs for Claude/LLM sessions
└── _meta/
    ├── conventions.md       # frontmatter, naming, tag rules
    ├── rituals.md           # daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly review cadence
    ├── philosophy.md        # 11 principles behind the structure
    └── templates/           # 20 Templater templates

Get started

1. Clone:

   git clone https://github.com/IgorKramar/obsidian-second-brain-template.git my-vault
   cd my-vault
   

2. Open as a vault in Obsidian (File → Open vault → Open folder as vault).

3. Trust the author and enable community plugins (Obsidian will prompt).

4. Install the recommended plugins from community-plugins.json. Each one's data.json is already pre-configured.

   Recommended plugins (install through Settings → Community plugins → Browse):

   • Templater
   • Periodic Notes
   • Dataview
   • Update time on edit
   • Folder notes
   • Tasks
   • Calendar
   • Tag Wrangler
   • Advanced Tables
   • Linter
   • Obsidian Git
   • QuickAdd
   • Omnisearch (optional, replaces built-in search)

5. Set Folder Notes "Storage location" to In the parent folder.

6. Periodic Notes — enable Daily/Weekly/Monthly, point each at _meta/templates/{daily,weekly,monthly}.md (or leave the template field empty and let Templater handle it via folder templates — see _meta/philosophy.md).

7. Fill in your own 10-Areas/personal-context.md, strategy.md, and family.md. The scaffolds are intentionally empty.

8. Optional: install a theme you like (the original author uses Obsidian gruvbox).

How to use

• Daily (5–7 min, evening) — fill the daily note, drop into health/metrics/<date>.md whatever metrics you care about
• Weekly work (Friday, 15–20 min) — review the week, refresh _ai-context/work-current-week.md
• Weekly health (Sunday, 10 min) — review metrics, refresh _ai-context/current-focus.md for the next week
• Monthly (last day of month, 30 min) — monthly note + finance summary in 10-Areas/finance/monthly/
• Quarterly (e.g. Aug 1, Nov 1) — re-read strategy.md, decide what holds and what changes

The full review schedule lives in _meta/rituals.md as recurring Tasks-plugin entries.

AI context starter pack

_ai-context/claude-starter.md is a wrapper that uses Obsidian transclusion (![[file]]) to embed your personal-context, strategy, current focus, and current work week into one document. Open it in Read view, copy the rendered output, paste into a new Claude/LLM session — the model now knows who you are.

Philosophy

See _meta/philosophy.md. Short version:

• Linking > folders > tags
• Minimum structure on start, grow when it hurts
• Atomic + evergreen for knowledge (Zettelkasten in 30-Resources/)
• Frontmatter everywhere — for Dataview queries
• Daily note takes 5 minutes, not 25
• Sync via your own private Git repo

License

MIT — do whatever you want, no warranty. See LICENSE.