name: obsidian-capture
description: Use this skill whenever appending notes, captures, or tasks to Ali's Obsidian vault. Trigger when writing to capture.md, task capture, or any append-to-obsidian workflow — even if the user just says "add this to my capture" or "log this note".

Obsidian Capture

Two separate capture files — one for general notes/links, one for tasks.

General capture

File: ~/obsidian/01_inbox/capture.md

Format:

## March 15
9:30 AM: the note text here
9:31 AM: another note

• Date header: ## Month Day (e.g. ## March 15) — add it if today's header doesn't exist yet
• Each entry: H:MM AM/PM: text — no checkbox, just time + colon + text
• Append to end of file; never rewrite existing content

Task capture

File: ~/obsidian/04_tasks/capture.md

Format:

## March 15
- [ ] task text here
- [ ] another task

• Date header: same ## Month Day format
• Each entry: - [ ] task text — Obsidian checkbox syntax
• Append to end of file; never rewrite existing content

Adding a date header

Before appending, check if today's date header already exists. If not, add a blank line then the header:

if ! grep -qF "## ${DATE_HEADER}" "$FILE" 2>/dev/null; then
  printf '\n## %s\n' "$DATE_HEADER" >> "$FILE"
fi