Set Up the Vault Baseline

Lesson outcome

You will set up a minimum viable agency vault in Obsidian that Claude can navigate, retrieve from, and update without creating chaos.

Why this matters in an agency

If you want AI to compound inside the business, your context has to live somewhere more stable than chats, browser tabs, and half-finished docs. The vault is that system. It becomes the place where offers, client notes, SOPs, market intelligence, and lessons live. Claude can only reason over what it can find, and retrieval only works when your notes are named and structured in a sane way.

Inputs, tools, and prerequisites

Install Obsidian and create a new vault dedicated to the business. You also need a folder plan, a note naming convention, and the willingness to start simple. Current official Obsidian docs on search, properties, and the CLI are useful here because they explain the native mechanisms the vault can rely on rather than assuming a plugin-heavy setup.

Step-by-step walkthrough

Create the top-level folders first. Keep them broad and functional, not aesthetic. A useful starting point is business areas, operations, active projects, clients, research, prompts and templates, and archive. If you already have a business knowledge base elsewhere, do not import everything at once. Create the structure first, then migrate the notes you actually use.

Next define the naming rules. Notes should be readable in search results and sortable by importance. For businesses, plain-language titles usually outperform clever shorthand. Use prefixes where they add real organization value, such as "SOP - Client Reporting" or "Offer - Local SEO Retainer." Do not create codes nobody remembers. The purpose of the title is retrieval, not personal amusement.

Now create the first twenty notes. A strong starting set is: agency vision, current offer, pricing logic, target niches, buyer persona, service stack, weekly scorecard, client onboarding SOP, reporting SOP, fulfillment QA checklist, content production SOP, sales workflow, objection handling, onboarding questionnaire, active client index, research backlog, tool inventory, lessons log, prompt library, and one "current priorities" note. These notes give Claude enough surface area to start helping on real work.

After that, wire the notes together with wikilinks. Do not try to fully map the graph. Just connect notes where the relationship is useful. A pricing note should link to the offer note. A client SOP should link to the fulfillment QA checklist. The lessons log should link to the relevant project or process note. Wikilinks matter because they help humans browse and they create clearer retrieval context.

Then add the durable instruction layer: CLAUDE.md and, where relevant, AGENTS.md in working directories. These files are not duplicates of the vault. They tell the model how to behave in an environment. The vault tells the model what the business knows. Keep those roles distinct.

Finally, test the vault with retrieval. Ask qmd or your preferred search layer questions like "Where is the onboarding SOP?" "What note explains our offer pricing logic?" or "Which notes mention reporting QA?" If retrieval is weak, fix note titles and note quality before you add more complexity.

Failure modes and verification checks

Common failures include overbuilding the folder tree, using opaque note names, and dumping everything into the vault before there is any working structure. Verification is practical: can you find the right note quickly, can Claude distinguish durable knowledge from temporary notes, and do the first twenty notes reflect the decisions the business actually makes? If not, the vault is decorative, not operational.

Implementation checklist

• Create the top-level folders.
• Set a plain-language naming convention.
• Draft the first twenty agency notes.
• Add useful wikilinks between related notes.
• Keep CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md separate from the vault knowledge layer.
• Test retrieval with real business questions.

Immediate next action

Create the first twenty notes before you leave this lesson. A half-empty vault beats a perfectly designed vault that never starts.