The Operating System for Your Brain

A Personal Knowledge Infrastructure

The Problem Most People Don't Know They Have

Imagine you've spent 20 years learning, working, teaching, and building. You've had thousands of conversations, written hundreds of documents, taught dozens of students, and created frameworks that actually work. All of this knowledge exists... somewhere. In email threads. Google Docs. Your head. Scattered notes. Old presentations.

When someone asks "What did you learn from that project five years ago?" or "Where's that framework you built for X?" you know the answer exists, but finding it takes 30 minutes of searching through folders and trying to remember which file name you used.

This isn't a filing problem. It's an infrastructure problem.

The Insight That Changes Everything

Most people think of their computer as a place to store files. But what if it could be a place where your knowledge compounds?

What if, instead of scattering your work across dozens of apps and platforms, you had:

This isn't science fiction. This is what a properly designed personal knowledge infrastructure makes possible.

The System: Five Interlocking Parts

1. The Vault: Your Second Brain in Plain Text

At the center is an Obsidian vault — think of it as a personal wiki, except every file is just text that will outlast any software company. No proprietary formats. No lock-in. Just Markdown files you can read in any text editor, now or 50 years from now.

Every file has one home. Every idea connects to others. Nothing gets lost.

2. Git: The Time Machine for Your Knowledge

Every change is tracked. Every version is preserved. I can see what I was working on last Tuesday, compare how a framework evolved over six months, or recover something I deleted three years ago.

This isn't just backup — it's a full history of your thinking.

3. AI That Knows Your Work

This is where it gets powerful. An AI assistant that works inside your terminal, with full access to your vault.

It reads your protocols so it knows your systems. It accesses your files so it can reference your actual work. It executes commands to convert files, organize folders, run commits. It remembers context from conversation to conversation.

I don't ask it "How do I convert these PDFs?" — I say "Import the student deliverables" and it finds the zip, extracts submissions, converts to Markdown, names them, places them, and commits everything. I wrote the protocol once. Now it's automated forever.

4. Protocols: Instructions That Compound

Instead of reinventing the wheel every time, I write protocols. These aren't just documentation — they're executable instructions for my AI assistant. I write them in natural language, the AI reads them, and suddenly repetitive work becomes one command.

5. Slash Commands: Personal Automation

Custom commands that trigger complex workflows. These aren't programming — they're just Markdown files that tell the AI what to do.

How It Works In Practice

Grading Student Work

Old way (2 hours): Download zip. Extract. Open each doc. Read. Copy. Rename. Remember who submitted what.

New way (5 minutes): Say "Import the pretotype memos." AI finds zip, extracts, converts, names, organizes. I read in Obsidian with split-screen view.

Building a Teaching Framework

Old way: Start new Google Doc. Lose track of it. Create another version. Have 5 files named "Framework v2 final REAL." Can't remember which is current.

New way: Work in Obsidian with git tracking every version. Framework lives in one canonical location. Git history shows exact evolution. Students always get the current version.

Answering "What did we decide about X?"

Old way: "I think it's in that Slack thread... Or maybe that email..."

New way: Ask the AI. It searches the entire vault. Finds the decision document. References the exact paragraph. Includes when it was decided and why.

The Power You Didn't Know You Needed

  1. Nothing Gets Lost. Every conversation, every framework, every decision — captured once, findable forever.
  2. Work Compounds. A protocol for importing student work isn't just for one semester. It's infrastructure that makes every future semester easier.
  3. AI That Knows Your Domain. Because it has access to your full vault, it doesn't give generic advice. It gives advice based on your actual frameworks, your actual constraints.
  4. Eliminate Repeated Work. If you've done something once, the AI can do it automatically next time.
  5. Teach Your System to Others. When someone asks "How do you do X?" you share the protocol file.

The Learning Curve (And Why It's Worth It)

Week 1: "Why can't I just use Google Drive?" Learning Markdown feels annoying. Terminal feels intimidating.

Week 4: "Oh, I see why everything is in one place." Starting to build muscle memory.

Month 3: "Wait, I can automate this?" First protocol written. First command created.

Month 6: "I can't believe I used to work the old way." Vault has thousands of files. Protocols handle 80% of repetitive work. Focus on thinking, not managing.

What This System Really Is

It's not productivity porn. It's not tool obsession.

It's treating knowledge work as an engineering problem.

If you were building software, you'd have version control, documentation, automation, and testing. Why shouldn't your teaching, writing, and thinking have the same infrastructure?

The Uncomfortable Truth

Most people are renting their knowledge from Google, Microsoft, or Notion. When the terms change, when the pricing changes, when the features change — you adapt.

This system means owning your knowledge infrastructure. You control the files. You control the structure. You control the automation.

The tradeoff: you have to build it yourself.

The payoff: it gets better every day you use it.

Starting Small

  1. One folder in Obsidian for your active project
  2. Git tracking changes
  3. CLAUDE.md telling the AI about your work
  4. One protocol for one repetitive task

Then let it grow as you see what's possible.

The question isn't "Is this worth learning?"

The question is "What could I build if my knowledge compounded for the next 10 years?"

Back to Writing