wienerdog-setup

name	wienerdog-setup
description	Set up Wienerdog: interview the user and build their identity notes. Use when the user asks to set up or reconfigure Wienerdog.

Wienerdog setup

Your job is to help the person set up Wienerdog by having a short, friendly conversation and then saving what you learn into their notes. Those notes are the single source of truth about them. A small piece of code (wienerdog sync) turns those notes into the short briefing you and other AI tools read at the start of every session.

Two hard rules, no exceptions:

• Only ever write inside the vault and config.yaml. Never create or edit files anywhere else on their computer.
• Never touch CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md yourself. The briefing that goes into those files is generated by wienerdog sync. Your job is the notes; the code owns the briefing.

Keep the whole thing under about ten minutes. Ask about one thing at a time, in plain language. This is a conversation, not a form.

Step 0 — Are they setting up, or adjusting?

First, find the vault path (see Step 1) and open 06-Identity/profile.md.

If there is no vault yet — the vault: line is empty or null, or the folder does not exist — this is always a first-time setup. Skip the profile.md peek and go straight to Step 1, then Step 3, where the vault gets created or chosen.

• If it still looks like an empty template (headings like ## Role with nothing written under them), this is a first-time setup. Go to Step 1 and do the full interview.

• If it already has real content, do NOT run the whole interview again. This skill is also their settings panel — they can run it any time to change something. Ask a short menu question:

  What would you like to adjust? profile / preferences & tone / goals / standing instructions / memory mode

  Update only the section(s) they pick, then jump to Step 5 and Step 6 to save and refresh. Leave everything else exactly as it is.

  Ask this as a closed-choice question (closed-choice) — see "Asking closed-choice questions" below; offer those five items as the presets.

Step 1 — Find the vault

Read ~/.wienerdog/config.yaml and look at the vault: line — that is the folder where their notes live.

• If config.yaml itself is missing → Wienerdog is not installed yet. Tell them to run npx wienerdog@latest init in their terminal (or paste the install prompt from the README so their AI does it), then restart Claude Code / Codex so the /wienerdog-* commands load, and start this skill again.
• If the vault: line is empty or null, or the folder does not exist yet → this is normal right after install; they have not chosen a vault yet. Treat it as a first-time setup and continue to Step 3, where you create or choose the vault before writing any notes.
• If it points at an existing folder with real identity content → this is the settings-panel case; use the Step 0 menu.

Asking closed-choice questions

A few of the questions below have a small, fixed set of sensible answers (for example a tone, or one of three vault choices). Ask those as a structured multiple-choice question so the person can pick with one tap instead of typing:

• Where your environment provides a structured multiple-choice question tool — in Claude Code this is the AskUserQuestion tool — use it for these items and offer the listed presets as the choices.
• Where it does not — for example Codex CLI — present exactly the same options as a short numbered list in plain text and let them reply with a number.

Never depend on any one tool by name; always degrade gracefully to the numbered list. Whichever way you ask, one thing is always true: the person can always type their own answer instead of picking a preset — a closed-choice question is a shortcut, never a cage. (In Claude Code the AskUserQuestion tool already offers a free-text "Other" choice automatically, so you do not need to add one; just make sure that, however you ask, a custom typed answer is always accepted.)

Only the questions marked (closed-choice) below are asked this way. Everything else in the interview is open — ask it as a normal, free-text conversation and let the person answer in their own words.

Step 2 — The interview

Talk them through these topics, one at a time. Listen more than you type. It is fine to skip a topic if they have nothing to say.

• Role and background — what they do, and the experience behind it.
• Current projects and responsibilities — what is on their plate right now.
• Communication preferences — how they like answers: how much detail and what format (bullets, prose, tables).
• Preferred tone (closed-choice) — ask which tone they want, offering these presets: Direct and concise, Warm and conversational, Neutral and professional.
• Tools they live in — the apps and systems they use every day.
• Goals — what they are working toward now, and over the next year.
• Anything their AI should always know or never do — standing rules, boundaries, sensitivities.

Step 3 — Existing notes

Ask whether they already keep an Obsidian vault or another notes system, and where it lives.

If they do, offer them three choices (closed-choice) in plain language:

1. Start fresh — create a brand-new, empty vault and do nothing with the old one. This is the default if they are not sure. To create it, run wienerdog init --fresh-vault in the terminal — that scaffolds the default vault at ~/wienerdog, records it in config.yaml, and puts it under git.

2. Import from it — you read their old vault once, pull the useful facts about them into the new vault, and leave the old vault completely untouched. Best for most people who already have notes somewhere.

3. Adopt it in place (power users) — Wienerdog uses their existing vault AS the vault, instead of the new one. This is not done here: tell them to finish or exit this setup and run the adopt command from the terminal. The exact form depends on how Wienerdog was installed:

   • Installed from npm (the usual case): wienerdog adopt <path-to-their-vault>
   • Running from a cloned repo (before the npm release): node <path-to-the-wienerdog-repo>/bin/wienerdog.js adopt <path-to-their-vault>

   Both do exactly the same thing. That command checks the prerequisites (a normal local folder, not iCloud or Documents; a git repository — it will offer to set one up if it is not) and confirms the folder layout with them before it changes anything. Do not attempt adoption yourself from inside this skill.

If they choose Import, do the following:

• First, run wienerdog init --fresh-vault in the terminal to create the fresh vault the import will write into (it scaffolds ~/wienerdog, records it in config.yaml, and puts it under git).
• Ask for the path to their existing vault. Read it read-only. You must never move, copy wholesale, edit, or delete any file in their existing vault — you only read it, and every write goes into the new vault instead.
• Mine four things from the old vault: who they are (role and background), how they like to work (preferences, tone, tools), what they are working toward (goals), and their current active projects. Look in the obvious places — an about or profile note, recent daily notes, project folders and MOCs.
• Write what you found into the new vault's identity notes — the same four files Step 5 uses (06-Identity/profile.md, preferences.md, goals.md, instructions.md) — and seed each active project you find as its own 01-Projects/<kebab-case-name>/index.md. Only write facts you actually found in the old vault; invent nothing.
• On every note you write from imported content, set the frontmatter origin: to import (not interview), so where it came from stays auditable. Keep the rest of the standard note frontmatter as usual.
• Then show them exactly what was taken: list, right there in the conversation, each fact or project you imported and which file it went into, so they can see it and correct anything that is wrong. This summary of what was taken is mandatory — import is never silent.
• After importing, carry on with the interview as normal (Steps 4–6) to fill any gaps and let them fix anything the import got wrong.

If they choose Start fresh or Adopt, skip the mining above and continue the interview normally. Adoption's own folder-layout mapping and prerequisite checks are handled entirely by wienerdog adopt, so this skill never edits the old vault.

Shelling out to wienerdog init --fresh-vault (like wienerdog sync in Step 6) is consistent with the "only write inside the vault and config.yaml" rule: that command writes only to the vault and config.yaml.

Step 4 — How much should the AI remember?

Ask how eagerly they want their AI to remember things (closed-choice), and explain the choices in plain terms:

• conservative — the AI suggests what to remember, keeps less, and checks with you more often.
• standard — a sensible middle ground (the default).
• eager — the AI remembers things aggressively on its own.

Update the memory_mode: line in ~/.wienerdog/config.yaml to their choice (conservative, standard, or eager). Change nothing else in that file.

Step 5 — Write it down

Save what you learned into these four notes, filling in the section headings that are already there:

• 06-Identity/profile.md — Role, Background, Context.
• 06-Identity/preferences.md — Communication, Tools, Workflow.
• 06-Identity/goals.md — Now, This year.
• 06-Identity/instructions.md — How to work with me.

Write clean, factual notes in their words. No filler, no flattery, no invented detail — if they did not say it, do not write it. In each file you change, set the updated: date in the frontmatter to today and make sure origin: reads interview.

Step 6 — Refresh and confirm

Run wienerdog sync in the shell. This rebuilds the briefing from the notes you just wrote.

Then tell them, in a sentence or two, what their AI now knows about them, and quote a few lines of the fresh digest (~/.wienerdog/state/digest.md) so they can see it for themselves. Invite them to run this setup again any time they want to change something.

Finally, mention the nightly dream so it is never a surprise: tell them Wienerdog has scheduled a quiet nightly memory pass ("dreaming") at 03:30 that folds each day's work into their vault, and relay this reassurance in plain words — "If your computer is off or asleep at that time, don't worry — Wienerdog catches up automatically the next time you're back." They never need to leave the machine on overnight.