Free · no account · yours to change
Keep a record of your own life
A free Obsidian vault for the thing most note systems never quite get to: not tasks, not articles you saved, but what you have actually worked out about yourself — and why you believed it at the time.
8 KB. Nineteen Markdown files. No plugins, no account, no subscription — and it works on a phone.
1Download and unzip
One folder, nineteen plain Markdown files. Nothing to install beyond Obsidian itself, which is free.
2Open it as a vault
In Obsidian: Open folder as vault, and pick the folder you just unzipped. That is the whole setup.
3Write one note today
Go to
Day-to-Day Analysisand write what is on your mind. Everything else is scaffolding you grow into.
Why this shape
Most personal vaults die the same way: everything goes into one undifferentiated pile, and six months later you cannot find what you concluded or work out why you believed it. The fix is not more folders. It is writing down what a conclusion rests on at the moment you reach it, and linking notes to each other rather than filing them neatly.
So the templates ask awkward questions. The reading note asks what would change your mind. The decision log asks what you expected to happen, before you know — a prediction you recorded is worth ten you remember making. Those two fields are most of the value here.
The eleven folders, and what goes in each
00 - Overview & Synthesisthe short version of everything else — written last01 - Chart Data & Referencesource material, and a glossary in your own words02 - Wealth & Careerwork, money, what earns and what leaks03 - Relationshipspartnership, family, who shapes a decision04 - Self, Purpose & Spiritdirection, meaning, practice, private patterns05 - Remedies & Action Planswhat you actually decided to do06 - Timing & Forecastsperiods, seasons, the year ahead07 - Gamified Selfareas scored against your own ceiling, not other people’s08 - Life Readingsparents, children, friendships, travel, later years10 - Sources & Methodologywhy you concluded something, and what it rested onDay-to-Day Analysisdated notes, one per session
Empty folders are not a failure; they are room. Delete any you will never use — it is your vault, and they are just folders.
The five templates
Reading notea conclusion, what it rests on, and — the useful field — what would change your mindDaily notewhat happened, what you noticed about yourself, what to follow upDecision logthe options, what you chose, what you were afraid of, and what you expected to happenArea reviewwhere one part of life stands, its ceiling, and one thing for the next 30 daysCarry-over notefielded, for resuming a long conversation — including what you ruled out
They use only Obsidian’s built-in {{date}}and {{title}}. No Templater, no Dataview, nothing to configure — because none of those are installed in your vault, and a template that needs three plugins is a template nobody uses.
Never used Obsidian before?
It is a free app that edits Markdown files in a folder on your device. No account, no cloud, no lock-in — if you stop using it tomorrow, your notes are still ordinary text files you can open anywhere. Download it from obsidian.md.
The one idea worth knowing: typing [[Work]] in any note makes a link, and the link works even if that note does not exist yet. A link to a note you have not written is not an error — it is a note worth writing.
If you have an astrodai chart file
Drop it into 01 - Chart Data & Reference/_source/. The folder names in this vault are the ones your chart file already knows, so when you ask an assistant to write an answer up as a note, it knows where the note goes. The setup takes about five minutes.
You do not need a chart file for any of this. The vault is a way of keeping track of yourself; a chart file is one source among whatever others you bring to it.
How to use a chart file ·Why notes beat chats ·What astrodai makes