Research Vault

An Obsidian vault for centrally viewing research notes that physically live in per-project Dropbox folders (each shared with that project's coauthors).

Design

• Notes are real files in Dropbox/<Project>/Notes/; Dropbox syncs them and handles coauthor sharing. Obsidian Sync stays OFF.
• This vault is a plain local folder OUTSIDE Dropbox. Projects/ contains only symlinks (Mac) or junctions (Windows) into those Dropbox notes folders.
• The links are machine-local and gitignored; git carries the vault skeleton (.obsidian config, Templates/, Concepts/, Bases/) between machines.

Setup on a new machine

1. Clone this repo anywhere outside Dropbox (e.g. ~/Obsidian/research-vault).
2. Check projects.txt; if this machine's paths differ, copy it to projects.local.txt and edit (absolute paths allowed).
3. Run ./setup.sh (Mac/Linux) or .\setup.ps1 (Windows PowerShell).
4. In Obsidian: File > Open folder as vault, pick the cloned folder.

Note frontmatter follows the schemas in Templates/; Bases/Projects.base renders a project dashboard over that frontmatter, and hasTopic links point at the Concepts/ hub notes. See CLAUDE.md for the full conventions and SETUP.md for a from-scratch walkthrough.

Rules

• One sync engine per folder: Dropbox owns note content; git owns the vault skeleton; never enable Obsidian Sync on this vault.
• Adding a project = one line in projects.txt + rerun the setup script.
• Notes may move freely inside a project's Notes folder; moving a note between projects is a Dropbox-side move between the two Notes folders.