The Exchanges

Q That could go and do things, you know, uh, independently slash based on your guidance. So how can you use commands obsidian and open claw and reflection harmoniously?

A Yeah. So I think if you look at like, here's an example of one command that I do, it's just like a schedule command. Um, and so what I asked this thing to do is I said, schedule, I said, can I take a meeting with Greg Eisenberg today at, uh, Feb. 20 at two PM. Right. And what this does is of course it can look at my calendar and stuff like that, but it's also going to look through my daily notes. It's going to look through what I care about and then it's going to give me some perspective. So it says, your day is stacked. You're already recording on Greg's podcast this morning, followed by a team lunch outing and meeting with Peter and Vince. Your Feb. 17 notes show the Greg episode has been top of mind. The bulk has a dedicated Greg Eisenberg note. No, not a two. So the recommendation is no, not at two PM, but you might not need a separate meeting at all. Yeah, that's that's actually the correct answer. How does that relate to open claw? Well, OpenClaw is this like autonomous agent that can go and do things if you, uh, set it up to do that. Like it can do things without you having to prompt it all the time. It can just go and make decisions and build things for you, um, on your own. So now what OpenClaw can do is in the same way I just did this command, OpenClaw can do this on its own as well. And it can go and read my vault, find connections, and then make decisions On behalf …

AI assessment note: “OpenClaw can do this on its own as well. And it can go and read my vault”

Q So I see why it's interesting. But how does this get me better output?

A Exactly. Yeah. So the next thing is Obsidian released this new tool called Obsidian CLI. And what that allows you to do is it allows you to use Claude code and it can go and it can read all of the files in your Obsidian vault, which is a folder of text files. But with the Obsidian CLI, It can give Claude code, not only those files that it can read and access, but it can also give Claude code information about the interrelationships of those files. So you can see, so Claude code can see that, oh, this file is connected to this file and this file and this file. And that gets very interesting in terms of what Claude code can understand about you and what Claude code can understand about Uh, all of the relationships between the things that you're working on. It can start to surface patterns about what you're thinking about that you are not seeing for yourself. Some idea that you might've been writing about for a year in this vault, it could be a latent idea and it can just immediately say like, Hey, did you know that you've been writing about this same pattern in startups or in this particular project you're working on in every single note you're making across these different domains? And, and, and seeing that for the first time, Can be like a huge light bulb effect. It can cause like huge progressions in your learning and your understanding and your point of view on the world, but…

AI assessment note: “It can start to surface patterns about what you're thinking about that you are not seeing”

Q And is that how you started building a lot of your commands? Like it, it sort of, it started suggesting and you're like, just go build it.

A Well, I started off actually like building them myself. Like I'm like, Oh, trying to think about commands myself. But then, yeah, I said, I started asking the agent, like, well, wait a second, what commands do you think would be interesting? And, and just, and this might be useful. Another thing that I'd like to do is I like to move to like, Higher levels of abstraction when I'm using an LLM. What I mean by that is I could say like, oh, make a command that, um, tells me what I should focus on each day. And that's, that's like, um, a command that I thought of. But when I, when I, another thing you can do is you can step back and I can say, based on my obsidian vault and what you know about me, form an understanding of what you think my level of understanding, like, Where you think my skill level is in terms of a person and the projects that I'm working on. And based on that, suggest the kinds of commands I should use that would take me from the level I'm at to a higher level, right? Get like, you know, get it to suggest the commands for me instead of me suggesting the commands and I could pick between them. So look at this. This is, this is, it was, this was the agent's idea based on what it read in my vault, based on the notes I'm taking, right? So let's see what this is. Daily note idea extractor. Ideas, insights, and original thinking accumulate in detail in daily notes, but …

AI assessment note: “Well, I started off actually like building them myself... But then, yeah”

Q What other commands do you want to show?

A Um, so there's connect, which is allow, it allows me to take two domains and connect, um, them using the vaults link graph. So I can just say I did one here. And I just asked it to, uh, connect filmmaking and world building. And so it goes through and it reads all of these different files and then it can start to say, okay, let's, let's connect these two concepts. So notes and filmmaking, uh, notes and filmmaking's neighborhood. So I was like, 35 film watch lists. My first meeting with Toby notes in the world building neighborhood. Um, The world building essay, um, new as a media company. So these are different things I'm thinking about. So bridge one, the interview portal and the constructed world in filmmaking. If I notice something specific and ask the question about it, it would open a portal into a person's internal world, which is often a vast universe of concepts and beliefs and visions. So world building essay. I want my blog to show you what I value, what I believe, what I worry about. Like a tomb from ancient Egypt, I want my blog to be a place that you dig up and examine long after I'm gone. These are things that I've written, and I can start to see how these ideas connect together. Bridge to always on documentary equals continuous world building. Always on documentary is a creative strategy where companies continuously narrativize their characters, pursuits, conflic…

AI assessment note: “so there's connect, which is allow, it allows me to take two domains and connect”

Q Like for example, like, you know, I'm a, I built this thing called ideabrowser.com and every single day we give this validated startup idea. Like someone theoretically can go and You know, grab that information, put it in an obsidian vault, and then based on that, basically, you know, help them build the actual thing, right?

A Totally. Yes. So I want to show you this because I think it'll, it'll really make it, it'll take it out of the realm of reflection and into the realm of building, but the only issue is this takes a bit, so. Yeah. So the other thing is that with all of these, like with these commands, another pattern that I'm noticing is that they take a bit because it's reading so many files. And I would say that's a big difference between using obsidian and like are using cloud code with access to this obsidian vault that I'm noticing is all of my requests are taking way longer. And it's just because it's reading so much more. So like, look at this one. So this is ideas demo. So I'll run a comprehensive ideas generation. Let me start by gathering vault structure and context in parallel. And then if you look, it's really interesting to see what it's doing, right? So it's like obsidian orphans, right? So it's, it's, it's, it's like, I guess orphans are like files that are on their own, not connected to things, right? So that's interesting that it knows that obsidian dead ends, obsidian resolve, obsidian tag counts, So it's just trying to, it's trying to figure out like some connection between all these things. Um, and then it says, okay, daily read. So it's reading my daily notes. Then it found this file called new context, which is new is this media company I'm working on. Then it's like read f…

AI assessment note: “Totally. Yes. So I want to show you this because I think it'll”

Q Uh, you know, how do you, how have you been able to insert reflection into, into your life?

A Yeah. I think, um, for me, it's really about, there's, there's two reasons that I think reflection is interesting and making notes a lot is interesting. One is that it's great to be able to look back on them. Like for me now, obviously I can use an agent, but for me to go back and see these notes and realizing that, oh, like I'm a person that's continually changing. My skill is continually changing. Projects are continually evolving. Um, It's, it's just amazing. It's an amazing part of life to be able to reflect on how things are changing over time and how you are changing over time and how the world is changing over time. But the other thing is that there's like a functional reason to a reason I like to make notes a lot is because that's how I generate ideas. When I like get, when I sit down at my computer and I write things down, that's where ideas come. For example, this thing I just wrote here, it's just a quick note. I'm just doing it in real time. I'm just making it up right now. But Um, by writing it out, I feel like I internalize it more and I like having good ideas. I like progressing. So because I like having good ideas and I like progressing, writing is how I do that. And so I think, um, to, you know, if you want to cultivate like a writing as a habit, I think first you have to, uh, connect it with the idea that this is how you progress and this is how you generate i…

AI assessment note: “making notes a lot is interesting. One is that it's great to be able to look back”