Obsidian + Claude

Your own quiet second brain

A private notes system on your Mac that you can talk to from your phone — and a Claude that keeps it organized for you. Nothing leaves your computer.

What it is

Three simple pieces working together: a vault of notes organized into areas of your life, a capture page you dictate into on your phone, and Claude — who files your captures where they belong and helps you build the whole thing in the first place.

How a thought travels

🎙️
You talk
A thought hits — you say it out loud
→
📱
Phone page
Your phone types it as you dictate
→
💻
Your Mac
A tiny local helper catches it
→
📥
Inbox
Saved as a note in your vault
→
🤖
Claude sorts
Files it into the right place

The three pieces

Piece 1

The Vault

A folder of plain notes, opened in Obsidian, split into workspaces — one per area of your life (home, work, health, whatever's yours). Each area quietly tells Claude what it's for, so it always knows where things go.

Piece 2

The Capture Page

A dead-simple page you keep on your phone's home screen. Tap the mic on your keyboard, talk, save. It lands in your vault's inbox as a note — no apps to buy, no account, no cloud.

Piece 3

Phone Access

A free tool called Tailscale creates a private link between your phone and your Mac, so the capture page works from anywhere — without putting anything on the public internet.

How you start

You don't build any of this by hand. You hand it to Claude and Claude builds it with you — starting by asking how you want it shaped.

  1. Put this folder somewhere easy (like your Desktop).
  2. Open Claude — the Claude Desktop app is easiest (it has a "Claude Code" tab that can work on your Mac).
  3. Give it this folder and paste the line below.
"Read START-HERE.md in this folder and walk me through setting all of this up. Start by brainstorming how it should be customized for me. Go one step at a time — I'm not technical."

What's in the folder

overview.htmlThis page — the friendly tour.
README.mdThe quick-start, in plain text.
START-HERE.mdThe master guide Claude reads first.
01–05 guidesSetup steps: file system, capture, running it, phone access, and the prompts.
capture.htmlThe capture page itself.
catcher.mjsThe tiny helper that saves captures into your vault.
_templates/Starter files Claude uses to build your vault.

Good to know

🔒 It's all yoursEverything lives on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded, sold, or seen by anyone else.
💤 The catchBecause it's local, your Mac has to be awake for a phone capture to land. If it's asleep, the capture waits and sends later.
🗣️ Talk, don't recordYou dictate with your phone's keyboard mic — simple and reliable. There's no audio file to manage.
🌱 It grows with youStart small — a few areas and one capture page. Tell Claude what's annoying and it changes. This is a starting point, not a finished box.