Second Brain

An LLM-maintained personal knowledge base built on the LLM Wiki pattern. Drop raw sources into a folder, let the LLM compile them into a structured wiki, and browse it all in Obsidian.

How It Works

You feed raw material (articles, papers, notes, transcripts) into a raw/ folder. The LLM reads everything, writes structured wiki pages, creates cross-references, and maintains an index. You browse the results in Obsidian — following links, exploring the graph view, and asking questions.

The LLM is the librarian. You're the curator.

Prerequisites

• Obsidian — the markdown editor you'll browse your wiki in
• An AI coding agent — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, or any agent that supports Agent Skills
• Node.js — required for installing the skills via npm

Install

npx skills add NicholasSpisak/second-brain

This installs four skills into your AI agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and 40+ others):

Quick Start

1. Install the skills (see above)
2. Run the wizard: type /second-brain in your AI agent — it walks you through naming, location, domain, and tooling
3. Install Web Clipper: Obsidian Web Clipper — configure it to save to your vault's raw/ folder
4. Open in Obsidian — launch Obsidian, choose "Open folder as vault", select your vault folder
5. Clip your first article to raw/, then run /second-brain-ingest — the LLM will discuss key takeaways and build wiki pages
6. Browse your wiki in Obsidian — follow [[wikilinks]], explore the graph view, check wiki/index.md
7. Keep going — /second-brain-query to ask questions, /second-brain-lint to health-check

What You Get

your-vault/
├── raw/                    # Your inbox — drop sources here
│   └── assets/             # Images and attachments
├── wiki/                   # LLM-maintained wiki
│   ├── sources/            # One summary per ingested source
│   ├── entities/           # People, orgs, products, tools
│   ├── concepts/           # Ideas, frameworks, theories
│   ├── synthesis/          # Comparisons, analyses, themes
│   ├── index.md            # Master catalog of all pages
│   └── log.md              # Chronological operation record
├── output/                 # Reports and generated artifacts
└── CLAUDE.md               # Agent config (varies by agent)

Optional Tools

The wizard offers to install these. All optional but recommended:

• summarize — summarize links, files, and media from the CLI
• qmd — local search engine for markdown files (useful as wiki grows)
• agent-browser — browser automation for web research

FAQ