vault-lint — periodic health check

Report findings; do not silently "fix" anything — propose, then change only on confirmation. Vault conventions live in CLAUDE.md.

Folder paths in this skill are the template defaults — the authoritative paths live in the "Folder roles" table in CLAUDE.md's Vault structure section. Look folders up there by role — never trust the literal defaults on a renamed or non-English vault.

What to check

• Contradictions & stale claims — notes that disagree with each other or with the source they cite; dated statements that newer notes (or newer ingested sources) have superseded. Compare created dates when two notes clash — flag, don't auto-resolve: which claim wins is the user's call.
• Unresolved wikilinks — [[targets]] pointing at notes that don't exist. Valid as TODOs, but worth surfacing, especially ones dangling for a long time.
• Orphan notes — notes with no inbound [[wikilink]] from any other note (exempt: daily notes, the context files in 00-Context/, and the root infrastructure files CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md — they're entry points, not orphans).
• Inbox backlog — entries in 01-Inbox/ (including Brain-Dump.md content) that have sat unfiled; list them with a proposed destination each.
• Todo-rule violations — open todos (- [ ]) on detail pages that are missing from any daily note, and daily-note todos without a [[wikilink]] to their detail page. Also: stale todos that have been open across many daily notes — flag for a decision, don't nag.
• Naming-convention breaches — folders OR files containing spaces (both must be Capitalized-Hyphenated, e.g. Content-Creation/, About-Me.md), area/resource folders missing their same-named starter note, daily notes not matching YYYY-MM-DD.md (weekly notes YYYY-Www.md are also valid there).
• Frontmatter drift — notes missing frontmatter entirely, or missing tags/status where the vault templates define them; status: completed projects still sitting outside 06-Archive/ (flag only — archiving is the user's call, never automatic).
• Topic-index drift — for each resource topic: notes in the topic folder missing from the starter note's ## Index section, and index entries whose [[wikilink]] points at a note that doesn't exist.
• Unreferenced attachments — files in 07-Attachments/ that no note embeds or links.
• Icon drift — folders missing an entry in .obsidian/plugins/obsidian-icon-folder/data.json (only if the icon plugin is present).

Tactics

Step 0 — resolve paths first (mandatory): read the "Folder roles" table in CLAUDE.md's Vault structure section and substitute the actual paths into every command below. The <role> placeholders are NOT literal — on a renamed or non-English vault the literal English defaults would silently scan nothing and produce a false-clean report.

Pure Grep/Glob — no external tools required:

# all wikilink targets referenced anywhere
grep -rhoE '\[\[[^]|#]+' --include='*.md' . | sed 's/\[\[//' | sort -u
# all existing note names (compare against the above for unresolved links / orphans)
# (Glob: **/*.md, take basenames without extension)
# open todos on detail pages vs. daily notes
grep -rn '^- \[ \]' --include='*.md' <projects>/ <areas>/ <resources>/
grep -rn '^- \[ \]' --include='*.md' <daily>/
# folders or files with spaces
find . -name '* *' -not -path './.git/*' -not -path './.obsidian/*'
# attachment references
grep -rhoE '\!\[\[[^]]+\]\]' --include='*.md' . | sort -u

If qmd is installed (command -v qmd), qmd status adds index health; optional.

Output

A concise report grouped by the categories above, each finding naming the specific note(s)/ folder(s). Skip empty categories. End with a proposed, prioritized fix list and ask which to apply — then make changes only on confirmation. If notes changed and qmd is installed, finish with qmd update && qmd embed.