name: obsidian-daily-note
description: Use this skill whenever working with Ali's Obsidian daily journal notes — reading, creating, appending to, or opening them. Trigger on "daily note", "journal entry", "open today's note", or any reference to the journal.

Obsidian Daily Note

File location

~/obsidian/00_journal/daily/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD.md

Example: ~/obsidian/00_journal/daily/2026/2026-03-15.md

Always include the year subdirectory — notes are NOT flat in daily/.

Creating a new note

Use the template at ~/obsidian/00_journal/templates/daily.md. Replace two placeholders:

• {{DATE_LONG}} → e.g. March 15, 2026
• {{TIME}} → e.g. 9:30 AM

YEAR=$(date '+%Y')
TODAY=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d')
DATE_LONG=$(date '+%B %-d, %Y')
START_TIME=$(date '+%-I:%M %p')
FILE=~/obsidian/00_journal/daily/$YEAR/$TODAY.md

mkdir -p ~/obsidian/00_journal/daily/$YEAR
sed -e "s/{{DATE_LONG}}/$DATE_LONG/g" -e "s/{{TIME}}/$START_TIME/g" \
  ~/obsidian/00_journal/templates/daily.md > "$FILE"

If the file already exists, don't overwrite it — just open it.

Opening in Obsidian

open "obsidian://open?vault=obsidian&file=00_journal/daily/$YEAR/$TODAY"

Template structure

The daily note template includes:
- Word bank (energy/emotional/focus/relational/physical descriptors)
- Start time, body score (1-10), feeling score (1-10), 3 words from word bank
- "What is right now?" freeform description
- 3 gratitudes, 3 prides (with somatic follow-up on one each)
- 1 feeling to recognize, 1 thing to look forward to
- Work readiness, top 1 priority, intentions for the day
- End time, journal duration