Posts Tagged → obsidian

The Robot Assistant Field Guide is Here

I spent the better part of a year experimenting with AI and coming away unimpressed.

The chatbots were fine for generating a quick summary or answering a trivia question. But every time I tried to use them for real work, the same problem showed up. They had no memory. No connection to my actual files. No way to do anything except talk. I’d describe a task, get a wall of text back, and then do all the work myself anyway.

Then Claude Code arrived. Suddenly the AI could read and write files on my computer. That changed things. I could point it at a folder full of notes and say “find every open task and organize them by project.” It would actually do it. But Claude Code ran in the terminal, which meant I had to think like a programmer to get anything done.

When Claude Cowork showed up, the programming barrier disappeared. Same power, but now I could just talk to it. Describe what I needed in plain English and watch it work. That’s when things got interesting.

Add MCPs (connectors that let the AI talk to your calendar, email, Slack, and other apps) and the whole picture comes together. Memory, because it reads your files. Skills, because you can teach it how you work. Reach, because it connects to the tools you already use. That’s the formula.

Once I had all three pieces, I started building. Email processing first. Then daily planning. Then task management. Then customer support, content publication, journaling, sponsor tracking, podcast production, weekly reviews, and a shutdown routine that wraps up my day in fifteen minutes instead of an hour.

At some point I looked up and realized I’d built something. Not a chatbot I ask questions. A system. A persistent assistant that knows my projects, remembers what I told it three weeks ago about that contractor invoice, and handles the tedious stuff I used to spend hours on every day.

I call it my robot assistant.

The biggest difference isn’t even the time saved. It’s that I stay in the zone. I used to break focus a dozen times a day to deal with admin. Email, invoicing, task shuffling, calendar juggling. Every interruption costs more than the minutes it takes. It costs the momentum. The robot handles the donkey work now, and I keep working on the stuff that actually matters.

Today I’m releasing the Robot Assistant Field Guide. It teaches the method behind everything I just described. How to use Claude Cowork and Obsidian to build your own personal AI assistant from scratch.

I want to be clear about what this is and what it isn’t. This is not “let AI write your stuff.” If you want a tool that does your thinking for you, this isn’t it. The Robot Assistant Field Guide teaches you to build an assistant for the donkey work. The email triage, the task management, the scheduling, the data entry, the repetitive admin. So you have more time for your real work.

You get ten foundation videos, about three hours total, that take you from zero to a working robot assistant. Each video builds on the last. By the end you have a functioning system ready for real work.

Then the 10-week live workshop series starts April 2. These aren’t webinars. They’re hands-on working sessions where we build real workflows together. Email processing. Calendar and daily planning. Task management. Personal CRM. Review cadences. All recorded if you can’t make it live.

You also get a Starter Kit with a vault template, sample workflows, and an AI-powered assembler that personalizes everything to your work. You don’t need to be a programmer. You need a Mac and a willingness to try something new.

The price is $199, one-time purchase, no subscription. Use code ROBOTLAUNCH for 10% off through March 30.

Get the Robot Assistant Field Guide

I’ve made a lot of Field Guides over the years. This one feels different. It’s the first time I’ve taught you to build the actual tool. The robot assistant isn’t a demo. It’s how I work now. And I think it can be how you work too.

Here’s the first Foundation Video:

Apple Notes Markdown Text Export in Minutes

I’ve heard from several labs members asking for the best way to export their Apple Notes to text. My favorite method is the Obsidian Importer plugin. Even if you intend to use something other than Obsidian, this plugin gets a reliable export of all your Apple Notes to markdown text in minutes.… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) and Level 2 (Backstage) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Announcing the Obsidian Field Guide

I’m so pleased to announce the release of the Obsidian Field Guide. Hooray!

Obsidian Field Guide – Plus
Obsidian Field Guide – Standard

Want the Short Version? Sure:

  • 78 video tutorials 
  • 6 hours of content in the Standard edition​
  • An additional 6 hours of content coming for the Plus Edition​
  • Access to the Obsidian Field Guide Public Vault 
  • Workflows and Usage Samples 
  • Buckets of Obsidian Goodness 
  • Time-Limited Launch Discount Code gets you 10% Off.

Obsidian is a remarkable app, and the new Field Guide came out great. You can even get a 40-minute free sample at the above links. Check it out.

Want the Details? Here you go:

Obsidian brings new tools and paradigms to working with our thoughts on computers. Obsidian can be a game changer, and I’ve been using it since its early beta release. You can turn Obsidian into any sort of notes and data management tool you need: research, client work, PKM, or whatever. I use it primarily to document my own personal operating system, but there is more on that in the course. However, before you can make Obsidian truly race, you need to get some time behind the wheel and figure out how it works.

Build Your Own Mind Palace

Obsidian allows linking to and from notes throughout your Obsidian “vault”, making connections of thoughts easier and more illuminating. It’s built on a plugin-style architecture that gives the app an ever-increasing feature set with plugins built by Obsidian’s developers and the Obsidian community. It’s based on a folder full of Markdown text files, so you always own and control your data. It can be end-to-end encrypted to protect your privacy. People use Obsidian to gather their thoughts, write their dissertations, plan their projects, and even track visits to the veterinarian. The app is powerful and flexible.

However…

The Obsidian on-ramp is steep. It takes a while to wrap your arms around exactly what you can do with this app and unlock its full potential. You need a guide. That’s me, MacSparky, your Obsidian pal. Once you master Obsidian, you’ll also need help picking plugins and figuring out exactly how far down that rabbit hole you want to go. I’ve got you covered there, too.

The Obsidian Field Guide is a 6-hour course including 78 instructional videos that will get you up and running. The course starts with the basics and goes straight through to the advanced. It is carefully paced so anyone can take advantage of Obsidian. Each tutorial includes a full transcript and closed captioning. The transcripts are even bundled into ePub and PDF documents you can download.

Your purchase will also get you access to the Obsidian Field Guide Private Vault, where you’ll get additional resources, links, and access to the samples used throughout the course.

Want More? Get the Plus Edition

In addition to the above, with the Obsidian Field Guide Plus Edition, you’ll get an additional webinar series going deeper into Obsidian with additional materials, guest speakers, questions and answers, and even more Obsidian goodness. All webinar sessions will be recorded and added to downloadable content for plus edition customers.

There’s a lot more, along with a free 40-minute sample, at the below Obsidian Field Guide links. If you’ve ever wondered why so many people love Obsidian, now’s your chance to learn.

Obsidian Field Guide – Plus
Obsidian Field Guide – Standard

Don’t forget, the code OBSIDIANLAUNCH gets you 10% off.

Want a 40-minute sample? Here you go.

Obsidian 1.0

Obsidian, the personal management and idea connector that we have all been losing our collective minds over, is now officially out of beta with their release of version 1.0. Congratulations to the small Obsidian development team that made a very big app.

While I don’t use Obsidian for everything, I’m in it daily and use it for many things. Here are some of my favorite things about this application:

  • The file format is nothing but a folder full of markdown files. While you add some extra syntax to get those additional features from Obsidian, it is all universal and future-proof. If Obsidian were to go away, you’d still have all your data in a usable format.
  • Despite the universal nature of the files, you can do nearly anything with this application that involves words. At this point, there are 25 core plug-ins in the 668 additional community plug-ins. You can use this app to take a few notes or build an entire system around it.
  • The Obsidian community is fantastic. The people using the app are generally enthusiastic about it and friendly to people coming into it. The folks who decided to build on the Obsidian API to develop their plug-ins are intelligent and generous.
  • The Obsidian developers get it. They are entirely transparent and constantly working on improving the application. I particularly love how they publish for their Trello board so you can see what they are working on next. 

I love this app. I’m actively producing a new Field Guide about it right now. If you’ve been waiting for Obsidian to leave beta, you’ve got no further excuses.

Using Obsidian for Task Management (MacSparky Labs)

I spent three weeks running Obsidian as my primary task manager. I learned that task management in Obsidian is a lot better than I expected, but probably still not the answer for me. In this video, I walk through plugins and workflows to manage your tasks in Obsidian…

This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) and Level 2 (Backstage) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Linking Your Thinking Conference

I am fully invested in the emerging idea of linked thinking and how it can help us use technology for our own good. When Nick Milo asked me to participate in his Linking Your Thinking Conference, it was a no-brainer. I’m doing a session this Wednesday morning at 9:00 PDT, all about how I link from Obsidian to other places. This is part of how I contextually compute. Registration is free, I hope to see you there.

Project Management with Obsidian (MacSparky Labs)

I’ve been busy evolving a project management system from inside Obsidian. This system relies upon the use of status folders (instead of tags) and the DataView plugin to auto-sort and display relevant projects. I believe this system could work for all sorts of work but it is, admittedly, still a work in progress. In this video, I walk you through how I’m using it and what I’m up to… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Early Access and Backstage Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Automating Idea Capture with Keyboard Maestro and Obsidian (MacSparky Labs)

This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members. Care to join?

With all of these changes lately, I’ve been exploding with new content ideas. I needed a way to capture and manage them so I built a little Keyboard Maestro script to take an idea and format it into a special note, and then save the note to my Obsidian database. Here’s how I did it …