setup

name	setup
description	One-time interactive scaffolding for getting-things-adhdone. Asks a few questions (new vault or existing, how you track tasks) and copies in the right CLAUDE.md, templates, folder structure, and skill set from the staged repo at .claude/.gta-source. Trigger: /setup, run once after setup.sh has staged the repo into this vault.

Setup

Purpose

Turns the manual "Setting it up" steps in the repo README into a short, conversational walkthrough, so a new user gets a working starting point without reading the whole repo first. This skill is meant to be run once per vault, near the start - not something that recurs.

Trigger

/setup, after setup.sh has copied this skill and staged the repo source into .claude/.gta-source inside the vault you're sitting in.

Process

0. Confirm the source is staged

Check .claude/.gta-source exists in the current directory and looks like the repo (has skills/, templates/, vault-skeleton/, CLAUDE.md). If it's missing, stop and explain how to get it:

git clone https://github.com/pholbo/getting-things-adhdone /tmp/gta
/tmp/gta/setup.sh .

then re-run /setup. Don't try to fetch the repo yourself over the network - this skill only ever reads from the local staged copy.

1. New vault, or adding to an existing one?

Ask this first, one question at a time - don't bundle it with the next question.

• New vault, starting from scratch: copy vault-skeleton/* into the vault root as-is (it's just folders with .gitkeep placeholders - safe to copy wholesale into an empty or near-empty vault).
• Existing vault: don't copy vault-skeleton/ at all. Instead, ask what the user already has for: a Daily notes folder, a Templater templates folder, and whether they want a Projects/Archive split. Note which of these are missing and offer to create just those, matching the user's own existing naming rather than imposing the skeleton's folder names/emoji.

2. How do you track tasks?

Ask: in Obsidian itself, or a separate task manager?

• In Obsidian (Tasks plugin + Dataview queries): tasks live in the vault as #task checkboxes. Copy only skills/end-the-day/ into .claude/skills/ - skip start-the-day, surface-stale-tasks, prep-meeting, and update-tasks entirely, since those are all built around reading from an external task manager and don't apply here. Point the user at docs/obsidian-plugin-setup.md for the Tasks plugin's global filter setting - most of this silently does nothing if that's misconfigured.
• A separate task manager: ask which one, offering common options (Things3, Todoist, TickTick, Apple Reminders) plus a free-text "other." Copy skills/end-the-day/, skills/start-the-day/, skills/surface-stale-tasks/, skills/prep-meeting/, skills/update-tasks/, and skills/things3-export/ into .claude/skills/ (and .claude/skills/ sibling location for the export folder, matching the source layout).
  • If Things3: the things3-export/ AppleScripts work as-is (macOS only). Mention the AppleScript permission prompt they'll hit the first time a script runs.
  • If anything else (Todoist, TickTick, Reminders, other): the AppleScript export scripts are Things3-specific and won't work for them. Say this plainly rather than pretending it's plug-and-play. Point at skills/surface-stale-tasks/SKILL.md and skills/prep-meeting/ SKILL.md's own descriptions of the pattern they need (a read-only export of open items with creation dates and tags) as the shape to replicate against their tool's API/CLI/export feature - building that integration is follow-up work, not something this skill generates for them automatically. Offer to help write it if they want to do that now, but don't assume they do.

3. Copy the shared pieces

• Copy CLAUDE.md to the vault root. If one already exists there, don't overwrite it silently - show the user what the new one would add/change and ask first.
• Copy templates/* into the vault's Templater templates folder (from step 1's answer, or ask if it wasn't already established).
• Mention docs/vault-setup.md and docs/obsidian-plugin-setup.md as further reading, without requiring it before the user starts.

4. Report and hand off

Summarise what got copied where, what got skipped and why (e.g. "skipped the Things3 export scripts since you're on Todoist - you'll need your own integration there"), and suggest running /start-the-day (if an external task manager was chosen) or checking end-the-day's notes on #task checkboxes (if Obsidian-native) as the next thing to try.

Mention .claude/.gta-source can be deleted once they're happy - it was only staging.

Guardrails

• Never overwrite an existing file in the vault without showing the user the diff and asking first - this is a first-run scaffolding step, not a sync tool, and the vault may not be empty.
• Don't fabricate support for a task manager integration that doesn't actually exist yet (see step 2) - be explicit about what's a working example (Things3) versus a pattern to adapt (everything else).
• This skill doesn't need to run again after the first setup - don't offer to re-run it as a maintenance step.