🧠 Overview — The Four Levels
ZazenCodes shows how to manage an Obsidian vault with coding agents, escalating through four levels of sophistication. "For me, it was a huge unlock for managing my notes system." 0:00
| Level | Setup | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Local | Claude Code / Codex on your machine | Talk to & manage notes directly |
| 2 — Remote | Claude Code remote connection | Agentic access off your computer (with limits) |
| 3 — Always-on | OpenClaw + Hermes on a VPS | Fully remote, phone access, Git-synced |
| 4 — Custom | Your own Pi agent | A bespoke "Vault Steward" built into Obsidian |
💻 Level 1: Local Coding Agents
The vault is just plain-text Markdown files, organized with the PARA method (Tiago Forte) — areas, projects, archives. "The point is about the agents stuff." ZazenCodes spins up Claude Code and asks "what is in your context about this repo right now?" 6:08
claude.md points to agents.md, but Claude hasn't read it yet — "it's not until we actually ask Claude something that it will go and start executing this." Press ctrl+o to see the model's thinking: it runs cat agents.md and loads the vault context dynamically on first question. "Everything is built around this agents file." 7:58
A live demo: "Can we clean up anything from Japanese language? Maybe combine notes here." Claude runs bash to inspect the folder, proposes a merge (12 files → 7–8), and on approval executes it — creating new files, deleting old ones, modifying the rest. 9:23
🛠️ The Official Obsidian Skills
The skills come from an open-source repository by Kepano — the CEO of Obsidian. "This means what I'm showing you is very legit. These are official Obsidian skills." The four skills: obsidian-markdown, obsidian-bases, obsidian-cli, obsidian-json-canvas. 11:18
gh api to pull the repo, confirms the skills, and installs them. After a restart, skills lists them. When triggered — e.g. "find me some sad quotes, use your skills like bases and CLI" — it loads the Obsidian CLI skill and iterates over keywords (grief, sorrow, loss, tears) running search queries in a loop. 12:50
📄 The AGENTS.md File — Core of the System
The agents.md file is what "controls the system through the eyes of the coding agent. It will always read this file into context and instruct the coding agent as to how my system works. It lays out my whole vault." 4:40
To generate a fresh one: claude.md points to agents.md as the canonical source, so either agent reads the same context. The built-in /init command (in both Claude Code and Codex) generates the file. 14:45
.gitignore — "I ignored all the media, and I don't want my secrets going onto GitHub. Even though this is a private repository, it's just a really bad idea to do that." 7:04
📱 Level 2: Remote Control
"This is like a level-two system where we can now do stuff agentically with our notes, not on our computer, but there's some limitations, which I will explain." Remote control via Claude Code's remote connection sidesteps some limitations — but the full always-on setup is the next level. 2:40
🦞 Level 3: OpenClaw — Always-On, Fully Remote
OpenClaw and Hermes are the "always-on, fully remote" solution — "the thing that is going to be a big unlock for people using agents with their notes." The whole basis: the vault is on GitHub as a git repository, cloned into /opt on the VPS. 21:30
Access setup: ZazenCodes' OpenClaw agent has its own GitHub account (vivi@galia.dev). He adds it as a collaborator to the private repo, accepts on the agent's side, and the clone succeeds. 22:48
agents.md. The result: a "note" keyword alone was enough to trigger the right search — "because note maps to your Obsidian second brain." 24:48
The real power is the surfaces: "we can use things like our phone, anytime, from wherever, because this is on a VPS." Demo: search for a Pi Agent Fleet video on the phone, move it, commit — then on the computer, git pull brings the remote change into the local vault. The same Obsidian skills install into OpenClaw with the same GH CLI command. 28:22
⚡ Level 3: Hermes — Same Thing on Telegram
The Hermes setup lives on Telegram, accessed via the terminal CLI (ZazenCodes' instance is called "Near"). Clone the repo, then train it: "This is an Obsidian vault for my notes. When I ask you to search for my notes, make a new note, or do anything with my notes, this is where you should look." 31:05
opt/hermes." Hermes also supports hermes.md / .hermes.md with higher priority than agents. "I don't know if I trust Hermes — how do you know you'll read this agents file each time?" The session confirmed it loads. 32:40
Distinct from OpenClaw: ZazenCodes explicitly instructs Hermes to "update your actual agents file, the raw context file that you always read when you load up" — and not to update its memory. Hermes has the GH CLI as a skill, and even updated its own GitHub CLI skill while exploring the repo. Same phone workflow: add a note ("Adopt the pace of nature") from the phone, commit/push, pull locally. 36:14
🤖 Bonus: Custom Pi Vault Agent
The bonus level: build a custom Pi agent that lives inside the vault. Using Claude (Opus, high effort) to research the Pi NPM library and scaffold a terminal app scoped to the notes repo. 38:49
system-append.md — "it extends the default agents file of Pi. Whereas Pi has default instructions, now we effectively extend that with specific instructions which tune our agent to be specifically for this notes repository." This is a powerful feature to know if you're developing with Pi. 41:54
The result: "Vault Agent" — an interactive terminal app. "I'm the Azath House Vault Steward, an AI agent living inside your Obsidian Vault." A quick demo: "find me some dating advice" pulls from the notes. 43:54
✅ Key Takeaways
- Your vault must be Git-version-controlled on GitHub. That single decision is what makes every level — local, remote, OpenClaw, Hermes, Pi — possible. Keep it private and .gitignore your secrets and media.
- The AGENTS.md file is the core of the system. It's the canonical instruction file every agent reads into context. claude.md and agents.md both point to it, so any agent gets the same context.
- Use the official Obsidian skills from Kepano (Obsidian's CEO). obsidian-markdown, obsidian-bases, obsidian-cli, obsidian-json-canvas — install them system-wide via the GH CLI.
- OpenClaw and Hermes are the always-on unlock. Clone the vault into /opt on a VPS, teach the agent where to look, and you get phone access from anywhere — with Git as the sync backbone.
- Give agents their own GitHub identity. A dedicated account (vivi@galia.dev) with repo access sidesteps permission issues cleanly.
- Pi's system-append.md extends the default agent config — the clean way to build a bespoke "Vault Steward" scoped to one repo.
- Watch the keys on your system. Coding agents will grab any available API key and throw it at the problem — the video literally watched one cycle through Google then OpenAI keys.
🔗 Resources & Links
- 📺 Original video — ZazenCodes' full guide
- 🛠️ Kepano's Obsidian skills — official, from Obsidian's CEO