The 8/24 session, written down so you never have to remember it.
You now have a personal AI operating system: a folder of plain text files on your Mac that your AI can read, write and remember, so you stop re-explaining your context every time you open a new chat.
That was the thing you named on the survey. "Creating something big and not wanting to start over with context every time." This is the fix for it.
| Piece | What it is | Why you care |
|---|---|---|
| The vault | A folder of Markdown text files | Every note, person, meeting and project. Opens in any editor, forever. No database, no account, no vendor |
| Codex | OpenAI's assistant, running in your terminal | Where you talk to the vault. Plain English, no commands required |
| Obsidian | A browser for the folder | Draws the map of who connects to whom. The map is where it stops being a filing cabinet |
| GitHub | A private backup copy | A dead laptop becomes an inconvenience instead of a catastrophe |
Nothing here is a subscription that owns your data. If every one of these companies vanished tomorrow, you would still have the folder and it would still open.
today.md the running page. Your day
USER.md who you are. The AI reads this first, every single time
00-Inbox/ a doorway. Things arrive and they leave
05-Workbench/ scratch. Allowed to be messy
10-Timestamped/ anything with a date. Meetings, daily notes
20-My-AI/ your voice and your preferences
30-Organizations/ LLN, DPS, the schools
40-People/ your principals, your coaching prospects, everyone
60-Private/ local only. Never backed up. Never leaves this Mac
70-Knowledge/ reference worth keeping
80-Projects/ active work
90-System/ how it works
900-Bin/ archive. Nothing is ever deleted60-Private/ is excluded from the backup at the file level. Principal evaluations, personnel matters, anything told to you in confidence goes there and physically cannot reach GitHub. That is a configuration, not a promise.
Separately, and firmly: no student records and nothing identifying a minor goes in this vault at all. Not in a note, not in a transcript, not in a prompt.
USER.md before every session, so it knows who you are without being told| Not yet | What it unlocks |
|---|---|
| Gmail | Reads your email for context and drafts replies in your voice |
| Google Calendar | Plans your day against your actual schedule |
| Google Drive | Reads the docs you already have |
| Apple Notes | Your phone captures land in the vault |
| Obsidian CLI | Faster, more accurate answers about how things connect |
| Your voice profile | It writes like you instead of like a robot. Ten of your own sent emails is enough |
Each of these is one conversation, not a project. Do them one at a time, in that order, when you feel like it. There is no penalty for waiting.
It never sends. Every draft is a draft until you send it yourself.
It never guesses. If it cannot show you a file, a connected tool or a link behind a claim, it says "I do not know." A confident wrong answer costs more than a missing one, especially in your job.
Say so, plainly, in the chat. Say /learn and tell it the correction. It writes the preference down permanently, so you never give the same feedback twice.