Footy

Create a match note in the Obsidian vault by calling the brain-mcp create_match tool. The tool reads vault/Templates/Match.md, fills the date / opposition / team fields and any optional pre-match fields the user front-loaded, and writes the result to vault/Matches/<date> — <team> vs <opposition>.md. The skill's job is to collect the arguments — required ones via Q&A, optional ones by extracting from the user's prompt — and call the tool. Nothing else.

Scope

This skill is for one match note per invocation. It is not for:

• Season summaries, league tables, or aggregate analysis (those run over existing match notes — not new files).
• Capturing a general football thought (use capture — it goes in the daily note).
• Any sport that isn't the user's son's football. If asked for rugby, cricket, etc., stop and surface — there's no template for those.

Q&A flow

Extract whatever's in the user's prompt. Ask only for what's missing-and-important. Don't batch — ask one question at a time.

1. Opposition — required. If not in the prompt, ask. Lightly title-case the answer (heslington → Heslington).
2. Team — Fulford FC or Fulford School. If the user's request mentions "school" or "club", infer without asking. If the request gives no signal, default to Fulford FC — don't ask.
3. Focus area — pre-match focus for the player ("using your eyes", "first touch"). If not in the prompt, ask: "what's the focus this week?" Fills both focus_area: frontmatter and the body's ## Focus from this match section. If the user shrugs or says "nothing in particular", omit and move on.
4. Date — optional. If the user gave a relative phrase ("today", "tomorrow", "this Thursday", "last Saturday"), convert to YYYY-MM-DD (Europe/London) and pass it. If the user did not mention a date, omit the argument — the tool defaults to today (Europe/London). Only ask if the date signal is genuinely ambiguous (e.g. "the match" mid-week with no other hint).

Never ask about the other optional pre-match fields (pitch_type, pitch_condition, importance, notes) — only fill them when the user front-loads them. Never ask about post-match fields (result, minutes played, position, self-rating, event tallies) — the user fills those in directly after the match.

Other optional pre-match fields

Extract these from the user's prompt when present. Never ask for them — if the user didn't front-load them, omit the argument and the template default stands.

• pitch_type — surface type, e.g. grass, 3G, astroturf. Template defaults to grass. Pass only if the user names a non-default surface; if they say "grass" explicitly, omit (it's the default — passing it is redundant).
• pitch_condition — pre-match condition if known, e.g. wet, frozen, muddy. Usually omitted — conditions are normally observed on the day.
• importance — one of league (default), cup, cup-final, friendly, tournament. Inference rules:
  • "cup final" / "final" of a named cup → cup-final
  • "cup" without "final", or a named cup match that isn't a final → cup
  • "friendly" → friendly
  • "tournament", "festival", "one-day" → tournament
  • Anything else, or no signal → omit (template default league stands)
• notes — free-form spillover for context that doesn't fit a frontmatter field: competition name, age group, stage, venue notes, anything else the user provided. Lands in the body ## Context section. Don't editorialise — keep it close to what the user said. If the user gave nothing extra, omit.

Calling the tool

Once opposition and team are known, call create_match with:

• opposition: cleaned string (no slashes or null bytes; trimmed; lightly title-cased).
• team: "Fulford FC" or "Fulford School" (verbatim, including the space and capitalisation).
• date: YYYY-MM-DD if the user specified one, otherwise omit.
• pitch_type, pitch_condition, focus_area, importance, notes: as extracted above. Omit any the user did not signal.

The tool returns a confirmation like created Matches/2026-05-09 — Fulford FC vs Heslington.md. Echo that back in one short line, then on the next line print the pitchside URL so the user can tap stats during the match (see below). Do not embellish.

Pitchside URL

After create_match returns, derive the slug from the filename stem (everything before .md) and print:

${PITCHSIDE_HOST}/m/<slug>

Slug rule — lower-case the stem, collapse runs of non-[a-z0-9] characters into a single hyphen, trim leading/trailing hyphens. The em-dash, spaces, and any other punctuation all become hyphens.

Example: 2026-05-09 — Fulford FC vs Heslington → 2026-05-09-fulford-fc-vs-heslington → ${PITCHSIDE_HOST}/m/2026-05-09-fulford-fc-vs-heslington.

Errors

• match already exists: Matches/... — the tool refuses to overwrite. Tell the user a note for that exact team / opposition / date is already in the vault; ask whether they meant to edit the existing one or whether the date / opposition is wrong.
• template not found at Templates/Match.md — the template is missing from the vault. Surface this; do not retry.
• Any other error — surface verbatim. Don't guess at the cause.

Conventions

• British English in any prose you write (e.g. when echoing the confirmation, or when surfacing errors).
• Pluralising / abbreviating team names is wrong — FC stays FC, Fulford School is not FS.
• No [[wiki-links]] in the arguments — opposition names are plain strings, not Obsidian links. The MCP tool writes them as-is.

Anti-patterns

• Calling create_match with a guessed opposition because the user said "log the match" without naming one. Ask first.
• Filling in date with today or next saturday literally — the tool wants YYYY-MM-DD or omitted.
• Calling create_match more than once for the same prompt (e.g. "logging both Fulford FC and Fulford School matches") without explicitly confirming the team-by-team plan with the user first. The skill is one match per invocation.
• Using capture for a match note, or create_match for a non-match thought.
• Asking the user to fill in optional pre-match fields they didn't mention. Extract only what they front-loaded; omit the rest.
• Inventing an importance value not in the enum. If the user's signal doesn't map to one of the five values, omit and let league stand — don't try to be clever.
• Cramming everything spare into notes. If the prompt only had what the frontmatter consumed, omit notes. The ## Context section should be empty when there's nothing to say.