obsidian-life-memory

name	obsidian-life-memory
description	Manage an Obsidian-backed personal memory system for an agent: resolve vault, read/search recent context, append daily events, organize notes into a stable taxonomy, distill daily notes into long-term memory, and run graph health audits.

Obsidian Life Memory

Use this skill when the user wants persistent personal memory in an Obsidian vault.

Core Rules

• Use obsidian-cli for all note operations — never raw file tools on vault files.
• Read before writing: retrieve recent context first when the request depends on prior facts or decisions.
• Keep edits reversible: prefer append or edit over full create overwrites.
• Preserve privacy: do not publish or exfiltrate vault content unless explicitly requested.

CLI Setup

The obsidian-cli command at /usr/local/bin/obsidian-cli is a compatibility adapter over the official Obsidian CLI (1.12.7+).

• Runtime requires the official Obsidian app to be installed and running
• Adapter forwards note operations to the official CLI while preserving the older OpenClaw command shape
• Vault resolves to /root/.openclaw/workspace in this deployment
• Daily notes live in memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md via Obsidian daily-notes config
• Source: bin/obsidian-cli in this skill repo

Essential Commands

Reading notes

obsidian-cli read path="MEMORY.md"
obsidian-cli read path="People/george.md"
obsidian-cli daily:read                        # today's daily note

Writing & editing notes

# Append — \n and \t are interpreted (printf %b)
obsidian-cli daily:append content="## 14:30 UTC\n- Thing happened"
obsidian-cli append path="MEMORY.md" content="\n## New section\n- fact"

# Create — errors if file exists (use force=true to overwrite)
obsidian-cli create path="People/carla.md" content="# Carla\nMortgage broker"
obsidian-cli create path="People/carla.md" content="# Updated" force=true

# Daily create/overwrite
obsidian-cli daily:create content="# Daily Note — $(date -u +%Y-%m-%d)\n\n"

# Find & replace within a note
obsidian-cli edit path="MEMORY.md" find="🟡 PENDING" replace="✅ DONE"
obsidian-cli edit path="MEMORY.md" find="status: (open)" replace="status: closed" regex=true

Browsing the vault

obsidian-cli list folder="People"              # list .md files in a folder
obsidian-cli list folder="Projects"
obsidian-cli list folder="."                   # vault root
obsidian-cli status                            # vault overview + folder counts

Moving & deleting

# Move + updates [[wikilinks]] across the vault when filename changes
obsidian-cli move path="old/note.md" to="new/note.md"

# Delete
obsidian-cli delete path="Archive/stale.md"

Searching

obsidian-cli search query="Athens"             # search by filename
obsidian-cli search-content query="Moraitis"   # full-text with context lines
obsidian-cli search-content query="lease" max=5 context=5

Vault path

obsidian-cli print-default                     # workspace (/path/to/vault)
obsidian-cli print-default --path-only         # /path/to/vault

Workflow

1) Session startup

obsidian-cli read path="SOUL.md"
obsidian-cli read path="USER.md"
obsidian-cli daily:read
obsidian-cli read path="MEMORY.md"   # main sessions only

2) Log events

obsidian-cli daily:append content="## $(date -u +%H:%M) UTC\n- <event>"

3) Update long-term notes

obsidian-cli append path="MEMORY.md" content="\n## New section\n- fact"
# or targeted edit:
obsidian-cli edit path="MEMORY.md" find="old status" replace="new status"

4) Maintain knowledge graph

obsidian-cli list folder="People"              # check coverage
obsidian-cli search-content query="[[Person]]" # find references
obsidian-cli move path="People/old.md" to="People/correct-name.md"

Note on \n in content

All write commands (append, create, daily:append, daily:create) use printf '%b' internally, which interprets:

• \n → newline
• \t → tab

So pass multi-line content as: content="## Heading\n- item one\n- item two"

Resources

• CLI binary: /usr/local/bin/obsidian-cli
• Source: bin/obsidian-cli (this repo)
• Vault path: /root/.openclaw/workspace
• Daily notes: /root/.openclaw/workspace/memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md

Auto-Categorisation: gizmo-curate

gizmo-curate extends the skill with LLM-powered auto-categorisation. Instead of manually deciding where to file new knowledge, pass raw text and the tool decides path, title, tags, and whether to create or append.

Usage

# File a person, project, place, or fact automatically
gizmo-curate "Alice Smith is a contractor at Acme Corp, [e-mail]"

# Preview decision without writing
gizmo-curate --dry-run "some text"

# Pipe mode
echo "some text" | gizmo-curate

How it works

1. Sends text + vault folder structure to Gemini Flash (~1.2s)
2. Gets back: action (create/append), path, title, tags, formatted markdown
3. Writes to vault via obsidian-cli

Decision rules

Content type	Target path
Person	People/firstname-lastname.md
Project fact	Projects/project-name.md (appends if exists)
Place	Places/place-name.md
Financial	Finance/
Vendor/service	Vendors/
Unsure	Notes/

Integration points

• Nightly Memory cron (3am): auto-curates up to 3 new entities found in daily note
• Manual: call gizmo-curate any time during a session for instant filing
• Coding agents: gizmo-curate available on PATH for Codex/Claude Code to save project context

Binary

• /usr/local/bin/gizmo-curate
• Source: /root/gizmo_curate.py
• Requires: GEMINI_API_KEY env var (pre-configured in OpenClaw runtime)

---

Wiki Pattern (Karpathy llm-wiki)

Three workflows for building a compounding personal knowledge base.

Ingest workflow

When user sends a source (URL/PDF/text) to add to the wiki:

# 1. Read source (web_fetch, pdf tool, etc.)
# 2. Discuss with user
# 3. Create source summary page
obsidian-cli create path="Sources/YYYY-MM-DD_slug.md" content="# Title

- **Source**: URL
- **Ingested**: date

## Summary
..."

# 4. Update relevant entity pages
obsidian-cli append path="Projects/relevant.md" content="
## Source update YYYY-MM-DD
- key takeaway"

# 5. Update index
obsidian-cli edit path="index.md" find="## Sources" replace="## Sources
- [[Sources/YYYY-MM-DD_slug]] — one-line summary"

# 6. Log it
obsidian-cli append path="log.md" content="
## [YYYY-MM-DD] ingest | Source Title
Pages updated: list"

Query → file back

After producing substantive synthesis (analysis, comparison, research):

# Offer to file, then:
obsidian-cli create path="Projects/analysis-slug.md" content="# Analysis Title

..."
obsidian-cli append path="log.md" content="
## [YYYY-MM-DD] query | Analysis Title
Filed from conversation."
# Update index.md entry

Lint workflow

# Check for dead wikilinks, orphan pages, stale MEMORY.md entries
obsidian-cli search-content query="<!-- Stub"  # find stub pages needing content
obsidian-cli read path="index.md"               # audit for missing pages
obsidian-cli append path="log.md" content="
## [YYYY-MM-DD] lint | Weekly health check
Issues: ..."

Key files

File	Purpose
index.md	Catalog of all wiki pages with one-line descriptions
log.md	Append-only history of ingests/queries/lint passes
Sources/	One page per external source ingested