Screenshot of the frontmatter from the markdown version of this post in Obsidian

Your Notes Need Metadata: Make Your Wiki Queryable

You have been taking notes for a month. Thirty, maybe fifty notes. You remember writing something about how Python handles default arguments. You cannot find it. You search for “default arguments.” Nothing useful comes up; you might even get most of your notes returned. You search “mutable defaults.” Three notes come up. None of them is the one you want. You scan the file list. You find it eventually, only because you remember writing it the same day you were reading about closures, and you find the closures note first. ...

April 8, 2026 · 6 min · Jamal Hansen

Karpathy's LLM Knowledge Base Method - A Practical Starting Point

Karpathy’s LLM knowledge base method works by having an LLM maintain a wiki of markdown files rather than retrieving from raw documents at query time. When you add a source, the LLM integrates it into the existing network, updating pages, revising summaries, and noting contradictions. By the time you need an answer, the synthesis is already done. Your job is to curate sources and ask good questions. The LLM does everything else. ...

April 5, 2026 · 6 min · Jamal Hansen

Arscontexta Claude Code Plugin

Why This Caught My Eye A Claude Code plugin that connects to your Obsidian vault directly from the terminal. I’m trying it out, and it’s simply amazing. I’m kind of a note-taking nerd, but this is special because it turns your thoughts and conversations into notes and turns your notes into context for your next conversation. I’m impressed.

March 21, 2026 · 1 min · Jamal Hansen
Tracking ideas for writing prompts in Obsidian

Tracking ideas for writing prompts in Obsidian

I’ve committed to writing three blog posts a week and, to support this, I’ve been logging my ideas for posts in Obsidian. I’ve got the Tasks plugin installed, so I’ve set up a little system that is loosely based on the Jeff Goins three bucket writing system. To facilitate this, I’ve added a section to my daily note under a header called Writing. This doesn’t mean that I come up with ideas every day, but I want to have a spot where it’s easy to record the ideas when I get them and also remind myself to capture ideas when I’m in the daily note. ...

February 21, 2025 · 3 min · Jamal Hansen