Achhina's Digital Garden

Vault Restructure

2 min read

Objective

Settle on a coherent organization scheme for the Obsidian vault.

Context

Started with Zettelkasten Method + PARA. Over time the vault grew additional top-level folders (People/, Dashboards/, Devices/) that don’t fit cleanly under either system. Inbox/ accumulated mixed content: journals, experiences, logs, references, and how-tos that all needed defensible homes.

Outcome

Adopted a mode-based top-level structure (Atlas / Chronicles / Praxis) inspired by LYT’s ACE pattern, with consolidation of scaffolding under x/ and vault metadata as root files (README.md, decisions.md).

Final top-level folders:

  • Inbox/ — capture
  • Atlas/ — thinking (Notes / Maps / Sources / References / People)
  • Chronicles/ — reflecting (Journal / Reflections)
  • Praxis/ — acting (Projects)
  • Dashboards/ — cross-cutting indices
  • x/ — scaffolding (templates / attachments)

Root files: README.md, decisions.md, index.md, quartz.config.ts

Migration totals:

  • 198 files moved during initial restructure (Zettelkasten/People/Devices/Projects/Templates/static)
  • 12 files triaged out of Archive/ (Archive folder removed)
  • 29 files triaged out of Inbox/ to permanent homes
  • 1 duplicate deleted (Nix launchd zettel had a raw inbox version)
  • 1 stub deleted (Tmux FZF Window TODO)
  • 1 file rewritten as proper MOC (Dijkstra Algorithm)
  • 4 files marked status: outdated or superseded in frontmatter

Spec and decision history: README (with ## Decisions section) captures the full reasoning. 15 ADRs document the structural choices.

Approach (historical)

  1. ✅ Inventory current vault structure (folder counts, content types per folder)
  2. ✅ Pick a target structure and write down the rules
  3. ✅ Define a triage decision tree for Inbox/ content types
  4. ✅ Migrate in batches with the triage workflow rather than a big-bang move

Next Actions

  • Inventory current vault structure (folder counts, content types per folder)
  • Pick a target structure and write down the rules
  • Define a triage decision tree for Inbox/ content types
  • Migrate (executed as one structured pass with staged sub-tasks)

Resources

Notes

The convergence of Diataxis (action/cognition × acquisition/application), LYT’s ACE (thinking/reflecting/acting), ReAct (reason/act loop), and Kolb’s Learning Cycle pointed at the same underlying decomposition: knowledge work as discrete cognitive modes that benefit from explicit places. This validated the mode-based folder design.

Graph View

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