morning-ritual

---
name: morning-ritual
description: Use when starting your workday with a structured Obsidian task briefing - automatically loads obsidian-cli and obsidian-markdown skills to parse vault tasks, surface urgent/due items, and identify 1-5 MIT focus tasks. Triggers on "Good morning", "Morning briefing", "Daily Kickoff", "What should I work on today"
---

# Morning Ritual Workflow

A daily work kickoff ritual that surfaces what matters most and helps the user start with intention and clarity — not chaos.

## When to Use

Activate when the user says things like:
- "Good morning" / "Morning briefing"
- "What should I work on today?"
- "Start my day" / "Daily kickoff"
- "What's on my plate?"
- "Morning ritual"

## Vault Configuration

| Setting          | Value              |
| ------------------| --------------------|
| **Vault path**   | `$HOME/main_vault` |
| **Obsidian CLI** | `obsidian`         |

## Directory Structure

The vault should have:
- **`00-Tasks/*.md`** — categorized task definitions
- **`01-Calendars/*.md`** — date-tagged calendar event files

## The Morning Ritual Workflow
Run in this order. Be fast — use parallel reads where possible.

### Step 0 - Load Obsidian CLI Skills first
- If you have the `obsidian-cli` agent skill: load the `obsidian-cli` skill
- If you have the `obsidian-master` agent skill: load the `obsidian-master` skill

**Note:** This skill no longer requires the obsidian skill to be loaded — it includes a file-based fallback using `grep`/`find` when the obsidian CLI is unavailable.

### Step 1 - Get current date

```bash
date +%Y-%m-%d
```

### Step 2 — Query Calendar Events

Use the consolidated script to query both local vault calendars and external ICS/CalDAV feeds in one pass:

```bash
# Run the consolidated calendar query script
python3 "$HOME/main_vault/.pi/skills/morning-ritual/scripts/query_calendars.py" --days 6
```

**Script features:**
- Queries local vault calendars via obsidian CLI **or** file-based grep fallback
- Fetches external ICS URLs from Full Calendar plugin settings
- Parses and normalizes all events to Europe/Berlin timezone
- Separates into "today" vs "upcoming" sections
- Returns structured output ready for embedding

**Modes:**
```bash
# Auto-detect (try obsidian, fallback to file-based)
python3 query_calendars.py --mode auto

# Local-only (no obsidian required)
python3 query_calendars.py --mode local

# External-only (requires obsidian for plugin access)
python3 query_calendars.py --mode external
```

### Step 3 — Collect Open Tasks

```bash
obsidian tasks todo verbose=false format=json
```

Parse the JSON output. Filter only incomplete tasks (lines starting with `- [ ]`).

Group them:
- **🔥 Urgent / High Priority**: tasks with `⏫` or `🔺` or `#urgent` or overdue dates
- **💼 Work**: tasks with `#work`, `#task/work`, or from `10 - Tasks - Beruflich.md`
- **🎵 Music & Creative**: tasks with `#music`, from `07 - Tasks - Music.md`
- **🏠 Personal**: tasks with `#privat`, `#haus`, `#task/haus`, from `06 - Tasks - Privat.md`
- **📥 Inbox**: everything else from `01 - Tasks - Inbox.md` not yet categorized

### Step 4 — Check for Due Today / Overdue

Scan for tasks containing today's date (format: `📅 YYYY-MM-DD`) or past dates that haven't been completed.

Flag these as **⚠️ Due Today** or **🚨 Overdue**.

### Step 5 — Pick the MIT (Most Important Tasks)

Based on the collected tasks, suggest **1–5 MIT (Most Important Tasks)** for today. Use this logic:
1. Overdue items first
2. Items marked `⏫` (urgent) or with today's date
3. Work tasks over personal tasks (unless personal items are urgent)
4. Prefer tasks that are actionable (not vague ideas)

Present these as the **"Today's Focus"** block — the 1–5 things the user should commit to finishing today.

### Step 6 — Quick Stats

Show a brief summary:
- Total open tasks (across all files)
- How many are work vs personal vs creative
- Anything overdue

### Step 7 — Optional: Save Daily Briefing

If the user asks to save/log the briefing, create a note:

```bash
obsidian create name="Daily Briefing YYYY-MM-DD" content="[full briefing content]"
```

Use today's date. Store in the vault root or wherever the user prefers.

## Output Format

```
## ☀️ Morning Briefing — [Day, Date]

### 📅 Today's Events ([n events])
- [⏰ HH:MM – HH:MM] **Event Title** — *location/notes*
- [all-day] **Event Title** — *location/notes*

---

### 🎯 Today's Focus (MIT)
1. [Most important task]
2. [Second task]
3. [Third task — optional]

---

### 🚨 Overdue / Due Today ([n items])
- [ ] task — *[file/domain]*
- ...

---

### 💼 Work ([n open])
Top items:
- [ ] task
- ...

### 🎵 Music & Creative ([n open])
Top items:
- [ ] task
- ...

### 🏠 House & Personal ([n open])
Top items:
- [ ] task
- ...

### 📥 Inbox ([n open])
Top items:
- [ ] task
- ...

---

### 🔜 Upcoming Events (Next 5 Days)
**[Day, Date]**
- [⏰ HH:MM – HH:MM] **Event Title** — *location/notes*

**[Day, Date]**
- [⏰ HH:MM – HH:MM] **Event Title** — *location/notes* (Google)

---

### 📊 Stats
- Total open: [n] tasks
- Work: [n] | Music: [n] | Personal: [n] | Inbox: [n]
- Overdue: [n]
- Events this week: [n] (local: [n], external: [n])

---

*Ready to go! Type "done [task]" to mark something complete, or "focus [area]" to dive into a domain.*
```

## Interaction After Briefing

After presenting the briefing, offer these options:
- **"done [task name]"** — mark a task complete via Obsidian CLI
- **"focus work"** / **"focus music"** / **"focus inbox"** — show full list for a domain
- **"add task [text]"** — add a new task to the inbox
- **"save briefing"** — save the briefing as a note
- **"Evening review"** — close the day (summarize what got done, what's still open)
- **"Deeper analysis?"** or **"Full review"** — call `gtd-assistant` for comprehensive view including dangling thoughts and stub notes

## Marking Tasks Done

```bash
# Mark a specific task done in a file
obsidian tasks:update file="00-Tasks/01 - Tasks - Inbox.md" line=[LINE_NUMBER] status=x
```

Always confirm before marking done.

## Adding a New Task

```bash
obsidian append file="00-Tasks/01 - Tasks - Inbox.md" content="\n- [ ] [new task text]"
```

## Evening Review (optional extension)

If the user asks for an evening review:
1. Re-run task collection
2. Compare with morning MIT — were they completed?
3. Present "Wins today" (tasks completed since morning)
4. Show what rolled over
5. Ask: "What's the one thing for tomorrow?"
6. Optionally save an evening note

## Deeper Analysis: Calling `gtd-assistant`

When a user needs more than just daily tasks — perhaps they feel overwhelmed, need to understand their full backlog, or want pattern recognition across their vault:

### Trigger Phrases
- "What's really blocking me?"
- "I need a full review of my vault"
- "Help me understand what's unfinished"
- "Open loops sweep" (or similar GTD terminology)
- "Deeper analysis" after morning briefing
- "Weekly/Monthly review"

### Implementation
When these triggers are detected, switch to the `gtd-assistant` workflow:

> "I'll now run a full GTD sweep using the gtd-assistant skill."

Follow Phase 1 → Phase 2 → Phase 3 as defined in `gtd-assistant`. The current conversation context carries over — no data needs to be passed explicitly.

The `gtd-assistant` will return a more detailed report including:
- All open tasks by domain
- Dangling thoughts from notes
- Stub notes requiring attention
- GTD analysis insights on consolidation opportunities
- Pattern recognition across the vault

## Troubleshooting

### Obsidian CLI Not Available
If you see `[⚠️ Obsidian CLI not found — using file-based fallback]`:
- The script will automatically use `grep`/`find` to scan markdown files
- Local calendar files must contain date strings like `2026-05-16`
- External calendar queries require obsidian CLI for Full Calendar plugin access

### External Calendar Events Not Showing
- Ensure Obsidian is running with the Full Calendar plugin loaded
- Check that ICS sources are configured in plugin settings
- Verify network connectivity to calendar URLs

### Script Dependencies
- `icalendar` package: `pip install icalendar`
- Python 3.9+ required for `zoneinfo` module

## Performance Notes

- Open task count is typically > 300 — always parse with regex `^- \[ \]` for open items
- Use today's date (`date +%Y-%m-%d`) to detect overdue tasks
- Keep the briefing scannable — no walls of text, max 5 items per group shown
- Suggest MIT based on signal (emoji priorities, dates, tags) — don't overthink it

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