distill

name	distill
description	Distill quick captures from the personal knowledge vault's inbox (~/obsidian/personal/agents/inbox/) into their correct topical home. Proposes a routing plan, applies it after approval, and deletes each inbox note once its content lives in the vault. Use when the user invokes /distill or asks to process/clean up the vault inbox.
allowed-tools	["Read","Write","Edit","Glob","Grep","Bash"]

Distill the vault inbox

Promote quick captures in ~/obsidian/personal/agents/inbox/ into their correct topical home. Read ~/obsidian/personal/agents/README.md first for the folder map and house style.

Procedure

1. Gather. List agents/inbox/YYYY-MM-DD-*.md, oldest first. Ignore README.md and anything not matching the date-prefixed capture pattern. If the inbox is empty, say so and stop.

2. Route each capture. Decide its home:

   • Use the capture's Distill to: hint if present, but verify it still fits.
   • Otherwise use the folder map in agents/README.md to pick the folder, then grep within it to find the exact target note.
   • If no existing note fits but a folder does: plan a NEW note in that folder.
   • If no existing folder fits: plan a NEW topical folder + note, AND plan to add a line for it to the folder map in agents/README.md.

3. Propose (gate). Print the full plan before writing anything:

   • one line per capture: inbox/<file> -> merge into <target>#<section> or -> new note <path> or -> new folder+note <path> (+ map update)
   • flag anything ambiguous or that you'd drop/split Wait for the user's approval. Do not edit any file until they confirm.

4. Apply (after approval):

   • Merge/integrate the capture's content into the target, matching house style (# Title, purpose line, Related: wikilinks, sections). Integrate, don't blindly append - fold facts into the right section, dedupe.
   • Add tags: frontmatter to the distilled note if it helps retrieval (optional; no controlled taxonomy yet - use sensible tags).
   • For new homes, create the note/folder and update the folder map in agents/README.md.
   • Delete the inbox capture once its content is safely in place.

5. Report. Summarize what moved where and what (if anything) you skipped.

Notes

• Recovery exists (git mirror + Obsidian Sync history), but the propose gate is the real safety - get routing right before touching curated notes.
• Do not reorganize existing topical notes beyond what's needed to land the capture. Keep edits minimal and on-topic.
• Leave the inbox empty-when-done for every capture you distilled.