Obsidian Vault

Vault location

~/Dropbox/Apps/remotely-save/Vault/

(Synced via Dropbox / remotely-save.)

Structure

Organized into topical folders at the root — place a note in the folder that fits its topic:

• Code/ — dev/infra knowledge, per-project subfolders (Code/ARC, Code/T3, Code/Carmel)
• knowledge/ — general knowledge (knowledge/wiki/ for wiki-style runbooks/guides)
• tools/ — tool cheatsheets & indexes
• HQ/ — the HQ workspace (read HQ/CLAUDE.md before operating on it)
• Research/, Companies/, Group/, Teaching/, Meetings/, ViceDean/ — domain notes
• CLAUDE.md at the vault root — the authority for naming, dates and language (§ A5). Read it before naming any file, in the vault or elsewhere in Dropbox. Also learnings.md and a few other loose notes.

When unsure where a note goes, search for sibling notes on the same topic and match their folder.

Naming conventions

Two different conventions live in the same Dropbox tree. Check which one applies before naming anything.

The letter

It is per document, per day. The letter distinguishes successive versions of one document saved on one date. It restarts at a on every new date, and a document not yet saved today starts at a no matter what else was saved today. It is not a running version number, and it is not a counter over the folder.

2026.08.12 a TS Metrics.pdf
2026.08.12 b TS Metrics.pdf     <- second version of THAT document, same day
2026.08.13 a TS Metrics.pdf     <- NEW DATE, back to "a" - not "c"
2026.08.13 a Other Report.md    <- different document, also "a" - letters do not run across docs

To pick it: list what exists for today's date with the same document name, and take the next unused letter.

DIR="$HOME/Dropbox/remote-work/SCM"; D=$(date +%Y.%m.%d); NAME="ERC B1 Science Skeleton"
ls "$DIR" | grep -c "^$D . $NAME\."      # 0 -> "a", 1 -> "b", 2 -> "c", ...

The live version of a document is its newest date, then the highest letter within that date.

The name

<Name> is Title Case, in both locations — 2026.08.26 a ERC B1 Science Skeleton.md, not 2026.08.26 a ERC B1 science skeleton.md. Acronyms keep their own casing. Both locations hold legacy files that disagree — the lowercase index notes in the Vault, sentence-case files in Dropbox — and they predate the rule rather than qualifying it; they are not worth renaming, so do not take a neighbour's casing as the convention.

Authority: Vault/CLAUDE.md § A5 "Naming, dates and language", which also fixes date formats (DD/MM/YYYY in HQ, ISO YYYY-MM-DD in knowledge/), English for all structure (filenames, frontmatter, headings — bodies follow the source language), and preserving upstream spelling in pointers including mistakes (the Dropbox folder really is 02.1_Catalouge).

⚠️ The failure mode is real. The Vault has zero files named with the dated pattern and remote-work/ has many, so matching whichever sibling file you happen to see first gets it wrong half the time. Match the location, not the nearest filename — and when a folder's existing files disagree with the rule, the rule wins.

• Index notes aggregate related topics (e.g. Tools Index.md, knowledge/wiki/index.md) — just lists of [[wikilinks]]

Linking

• Use Obsidian [[wikilinks]] syntax: [[Note Title]]
• Link related/dependency notes at the bottom of each note
• Update or add to the relevant index note when creating a new note

Workflows

Search for notes

VAULT="$HOME/Dropbox/Apps/remotely-save/Vault"
# By filename
find "$VAULT" -name "*.md" | grep -i "keyword"
# By content
grep -rl "keyword" "$VAULT" --include="*.md"

Or use Grep/Glob tools directly on the vault path.

Create a new note

1. Pick the right folder (match sibling notes on the topic)
2. Use Title Case for the filename — this is a Vault note. For a file landing outside the Vault in Dropbox, use YYYY.MM.DD <a|b|c> <Name>.<ext> instead (see Naming conventions)
3. Write content as a self-contained unit of learning
4. Add [[wikilinks]] to related notes at the bottom; add it to the relevant index note

Find related notes (backlinks)

grep -rl "\\[\\[Note Title\\]\\]" "$HOME/Dropbox/Apps/remotely-save/Vault"

Find index notes

find "$HOME/Dropbox/Apps/remotely-save/Vault" -iname "*Index*"