Module 1: Foundation — Your Vault

Before you can build an AI co-operating system, you need somewhere for it to live. That’s your vault.

A vault is just a folder on your computer. Obsidian treats that folder as a knowledge base — reading and writing plain markdown files, linking between them, searching across them. The AI comes later. First, you need the foundation.

Why Obsidian

The short version: you own the files.

Every note you write in Obsidian is a plain .md file sitting on your hard drive. Open it in any text editor. Put it in git. Copy it anywhere. If Obsidian disappears tomorrow, your notes are still there.

This matters more than it sounds. When your AI has access to your vault, it needs to read files — real files, not files locked inside a database some company controls. Obsidian’s local-first approach is what makes the AI integration possible.

The other reason is markdown. Markdown is plain text with lightweight formatting. It’s been around since 2004 and will outlive every proprietary format currently on the market. When you write in markdown, you’re future-proofing your thinking.

Install and First Launch

Download Obsidian from obsidian.md. It’s free. Create a new vault when prompted — pick a sensible location on your filesystem. ~/Documents/Vault or ~/Vault are both fine. Avoid cloud-synced folders for now (we’ll handle sync in Module 4).

When Obsidian opens, you’ll see a mostly empty interface. That’s correct. You’re starting from scratch.

Go into Settings (the gear icon) and turn off a few things that don’t serve you yet: restricted mode off (you’ll want plugins later), and set the default new note location to a folder called 01 Inbox. Create that folder first.

The PARA Structure

PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive. It’s a filing system designed by Tiago Forte and it works well with AI-assisted knowledge management because it separates active work from reference material.

Create these four folders:

• 01 Inbox — everything goes here first. The dump zone. Don’t file, don’t organise. Capture.
• 02 Projects — notes about things with a finish line. Client work, specific goals, anything with a deadline.
• 03 Areas — ongoing responsibilities without a finish line. Health, finances, a client relationship, a skill you’re developing.
• 04 Resources — reference material you might need someday. Articles, book notes, research.
• 05 Archive — completed projects, old references, anything that’s done but you want to keep.

The numbering matters. It keeps the folders in order regardless of how Obsidian sorts them.

Your First Notes

Create three notes and link them together. This is how Obsidian starts building its graph of your knowledge.

Create a project note: 02 Projects/Launch newsletter. Write a sentence about what it is. Then add a wikilink: [[Newsletter content ideas]]. That link creates a new note when you click it.

Create that second note. Add a line back: Part of [[Launch newsletter]]. Now you have two notes that know about each other.

Create a third in your Resources folder: 04 Resources/Writing tips. Link to it from the newsletter note: For writing style, see [[Writing tips]].

Three notes, three links. You’ve just built a tiny knowledge graph. Over months, this becomes something genuinely useful — a map of how your thinking connects.

Before moving on:

• Obsidian installed and open
• Vault created with five PARA folders
• Three notes created with links between them

That’s the foundation. Everything else builds on top of this.

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This module evolves as your system does.