obsidian-recap

name

obsidian-recap

description

Synthesize a daily recap of Claude activity for the current project and write it to the Obsidian vault. Reads the day's auto-logged session notes, git history, and current-state note, then produces a narrative "what happened today" rollup that the link-only daily note lacks. Use when someone says "recap today", "daily recap", "write a recap", "summarize today's work", "obsidian recap", "wrap up the day", "end-of-day summary". Defaults to today; accepts a date argument (YYYY-MM-DD). Requires OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH to be set.

Obsidian Recap

Produce a synthesized, narrative daily recap for the current project and persist it to the vault. The Stop hook already writes one session note per session and a link-only daily note; those are raw artifacts. This skill reads those artifacts and turns them into prose a human can skim weeks later.

This is synthesis, not transcription. The recap explains what was accomplished and why, collapsing many sessions into a coherent story. It is the LLM's job precisely because a hook cannot summarize.

Recaps land in <projects_folder>/<repo>/recaps/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md (or Claude/Projects/<repo>/recaps/ if no projects folder is configured) and are linked into that day's daily note automatically.

Step 1 — Check configuration

Read OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH from the environment:

• Bash: bash -c 'echo $OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH'
• PowerShell: $env:OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH

If empty, stop and tell the user:

"OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH is not set. Re-run install.sh and provide your vault path when prompted, or add it manually to ~/.claude/settings.json under the env key."

Also read:

• OBSIDIAN_REST_API_KEY (empty string if unset — key presence gates REST API use)
• OBSIDIAN_REST_API_PORT (default 27124 if unset)
• OBSIDIAN_REST_API_HTTPS (default "true" if unset)
• OBSIDIAN_PROJECTS_FOLDER (empty string if unset)
• CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR (or fall back to current working directory)

Step 2 — Determine date and scope

Target date: default to today (YYYY-MM-DD). If the user passed a date argument (e.g., /obsidian-recap 2026-06-30), use that instead. Reject anything that is not a valid YYYY-MM-DD string and ask for the correct format.

Project slug: basename of CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR (or cwd), lowercased, non-alphanumeric characters replaced with hyphens, max 30 characters.

Effective folder:

effective_folder = OBSIDIAN_PROJECTS_FOLDER || "Claude/Projects"
project_base     = <OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH>/<effective_folder>/<project_slug>

Step 3 — Gather the day's raw material

Collect, in this order (skip any source that is missing — do not fail):

1. Session notes for the date. Use Glob on <project_base>/sessions/<YYYY-MM-DD>-*.md and read each. These carry the frontmatter, recent commits, changed files, prompts, agents invoked, and (on SessionEnd) captured decisions.
2. The daily note <project_base>/daily/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md — the link/GUID list of sessions that ran that day (useful to confirm session count).
3. Current-state note <project_base>/_current.md — the rolling "Where we left off" and "Open threads" (context for framing next steps).
4. Git history for the date, via the Bash tool from CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR:

   git log --since="<YYYY-MM-DD> 00:00" --until="<YYYY-MM-DD> 23:59" \
     --pretty=format:'%h %s' --no-merges
   

   If not a git repo, skip silently.

If no session notes and no commits exist for the date, stop gracefully:

"No Claude activity found for <project_slug> on <date>. Nothing to recap."

Do not invent content or widen the date range on your own.

Step 4 — Synthesize the recap

Write a narrative recap in this format. Keep it tight (under ~300 words of prose, excluding lists). Collapse repetition: if five sessions all advanced one feature, that is one story beat, not five.

---
type: claude/recap
project: <project>
date: <YYYY-MM-DD>
sessions: <count of session notes read>
tags: [claude, recap, daily, project/<project_slug>]
---

# Recap — <project> — <YYYY-MM-DD>

## Summary
<2-4 sentence narrative of what the day was about and what moved forward.>

## What shipped
- <bullet per meaningful change, grounded in commits / changed files>

## Decisions
- <bullet per decision captured in the session notes; omit the section if none>

## Open threads / next
- <bullet per unfinished item, drawn from _current.md open threads and session next-steps>

## Sessions
- [[<vault-relative-session-link-1>]] (<HH:MM>)
- [[<vault-relative-session-link-2>]] (<HH:MM>)

Grounding rules:

• Every "What shipped" bullet must trace to a real commit or changed file — do not claim work that has no artifact.
• Pull "Decisions" only from the ## Decisions sections of session notes. Do not manufacture decisions from prompts.
• Wikilinks are vault-relative: strip the OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH prefix, convert backslashes to forward slashes, drop the .md extension.

Step 5 — Write the recap (REST API if key present, filesystem fallback)

Vault-relative recap path: <effective_folder>/<project_slug>/recaps/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md (use forward slashes).

5a. REST API attempt (skip if OBSIDIAN_REST_API_KEY is empty)

If the key is set, attempt the PUT — try PowerShell first, curl fallback — using exactly the pattern in /obsidian-capture step 3a (read skills/obsidian-capture/SKILL.md if you need the code). The pattern is the single source of truth for the REST write; do not improvise a different one. Substitute:

• $vaultRel / VAULT_REL → <effective_folder>/<project_slug>/recaps/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md
• $body / BODY → the recap markdown from step 4

The result sets apiWritten to true or false.

• If apiWritten is true: dispatch obsidian-writer with recap_api_written: true (it will skip the recap file write and only append the daily note).
• If apiWritten is false: dispatch obsidian-writer normally.

5b. Dispatch obsidian-writer

Invoke the obsidian-writer agent with:

• write_mode: recap
• vault_path: value of OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH
• projects_folder: value of OBSIDIAN_PROJECTS_FOLDER (empty string if unset)
• project: basename of CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR or current working directory
• date: target date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• recap_markdown: the full markdown from step 4
• session_count: number of session notes read
• recap_api_written: true if 5a succeeded, false otherwise

Step 6 — Confirm

Report the recap path and write method. Example:

"Daily recap written to Amwins/claude-agent-pack/recaps/2026-07-01.md (via REST API)"

or:

"Daily recap written to Amwins/claude-agent-pack/recaps/2026-07-01.md (filesystem)"

Gotchas

• Synthesis, not transcription. If you find yourself copying prompt text verbatim, stop and summarize instead.
• Ground every claim in an artifact. No commit or changed file → no "What shipped" bullet.
• Idempotent by design. Re-running for the same date overwrites that date's recap (a single PUT / single Write). This is intentional — the recap reflects the latest reading of the day's notes.
• Read-only against source notes. Only the recap file and the daily note are written; never modify session notes, _current.md, or captures.
• Do not widen the date range. If the target date has no activity, say so and stop — do not silently recap a different day.
• If not in a git repo, skip the git step and build the recap from session notes alone.