obsidian-daily-note

name	obsidian-daily-note
description	Generate today's daily note in an Obsidian vault by carrying forward yesterday's open todos, summarizing active projects, and adding an "on deck" section. Use for morning briefings, scheduled daily-note creation, or when the user asks for "today's note".
platforms	["linux","macos"]
related_skills	["obsidian"]

Obsidian Daily Note

Generates a single markdown file at <vault>/Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md containing:

1. Carryover — open todos (- [ ]) pulled from yesterday's daily note, with strikethrough on yesterday's copy so nothing is lost.
2. On deck — one-line summary per active project page (any .md under <vault>/Projects/ that does NOT have status: archived in its frontmatter).
3. Inbox count — number of files in <vault>/Inbox/ so the user sees the backlog.
4. Scratchpad — empty section for the user to write into during the day.

This skill assumes the obsidian skill is loaded for vault file I/O.

Resolve vault path

1. Read OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH from ~/.hermes/.env if present.
2. Fallback to ~/Documents/Obsidian Vault.
3. Verify the resolved path exists. If not, abort with a clear error — do NOT create a vault.

Step 1: Find yesterday's note

• Compute yesterday's date in YYYY-MM-DD (use the host's local TZ, not UTC, unless HERMES_DAILY_TZ env var is set).
• Path: <vault>/Daily/<yesterday>.md.
• If missing, look back up to 7 days for the most recent daily note. If still nothing, skip Step 2 (no carryover).

Step 2: Extract open todos

• Read yesterday's note with read_file.
• Match lines ^\s*- \[ \] .+$ — these are open todos.
• Ignore lines with - [x] (done) or - [-] (cancelled, optional convention).
• Collect the todo text verbatim, preserving any wikilinks or tags.

Step 3: Mark yesterday's todos as carried

• For each open todo on yesterday's note, replace - [ ] with - [>] (Obsidian renders this as a "forwarded" checkbox if the user has the Tasks plugin; otherwise it shows as a literal > and still signals intent).
• Use patch with replace_all=false per todo so collisions on identical todo text are surfaced.

Step 4: Summarize active projects

• List <vault>/Projects/*.md with search_files target=files.
• For each project file:
  • Read the first 30 lines.
  • If frontmatter contains status: archived (or archived: true), skip.
  • Extract the project title (first # heading or filename without .md).
  • Extract the first non-empty line after the heading that is NOT frontmatter and NOT a heading — that's the "elevator pitch" line.
  • Emit - [[Project Name]] — <elevator pitch>.

Step 5: Count inbox

• search_files target=files pattern="*.md" path="<vault>/Inbox" → count results.

Step 6: Write today's note

Path: <vault>/Daily/<today>.md.

Use this template exactly (substitute <...> values):

---
date: <YYYY-MM-DD>
type: daily
---

# <YYYY-MM-DD> — <Day of week>

## Carryover from [[<yesterday-date>]]

<carryover todos as `- [ ]` items; if none, write "_Nothing carried forward._">

## On deck

<project lines; if none, write "_No active projects._">

## Inbox

<N> note(s) waiting in [[Inbox]].

## Notes

(Trailing blank line under ## Notes is intentional — gives the user a cursor target.)

If today's note already exists, abort. Do NOT overwrite — the user may have already written in it. Print a clear message and exit cleanly.

Pitfalls

• TZ drift: cron runs in UTC by default. A 06:00 UTC cron in CET is 07:00/08:00 local — fine. But if the user is in PST, 06:00 UTC = 22:00 the night before. Honor HERMES_DAILY_TZ env var if set.
• Vault on a synced filesystem: if the vault is rsync'd from a Mac, writes during the rsync window can be clobbered. The recommended setup is VPS-authoritative + Mac pulls, so this skill writing on the VPS is the source of truth.
• Frontmatter parsing: don't pull in pyyaml for this — frontmatter is bounded by --- lines at the top. Read first 20 lines, grab the block between the two ---, do line-by-line key: value parsing. Good enough.
• Project files with no body: if a project page is just a heading, emit - [[Project Name]] — _no description_ rather than skipping. Visibility matters.
• Idempotence: re-running on the same day must be a no-op (the abort-if-exists check above handles this).

Verification

After writing, read_file the new note and confirm:

• It has all six sections.
• Carryover count matches what you extracted in Step 2.
• Project count matches what you summarized in Step 4.

Report to the user: "Wrote Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md — N todos carried, M projects on deck, K inbox items."