compass README

The project's README from github.com/AgriciDaniel/compass. As one markdown file: README.md.

Compass

Life OS

Run your whole life out of Obsidian: one honest question set a night, everything else follows.

Compass is a complete Obsidian vault template of the system Mike Schmitz describes in "How I Run My Whole Life Out of Obsidian": journaling with daily questions, quarterly personal retreats, multi-scale planning, habit tracking, daily reading, task management, writing boards, and a DataviewJS dashboard that ties it together. The first-party Life OS application now sits above those workflows, with an AI assistant that reads AGENTS.md and runs a library of approval-aware prompts. Everything remains plain Markdown and properties. Ten community plugins and the first-party Life OS plugin ship inside the folder with their licenses.

Status: development candidate, not a newly accepted public release. The existing 1.0.2 archives predate the Life OS application. The next template candidate is 1.1.0, subject to packaging and native acceptance. Requires Obsidian 1.13.1 or newer. Core dashboard mobile compatibility needs native testing; Agent Client and the local API bridge are desktop-only.

Watch the demo

Watch the Compass (Life OS) demo by Daniel Agrici

Watch demo here: a walkthrough of Compass by Daniel Agrici.

Watch the idea

How I Run My Whole Life Out of Obsidian

Video by Mike Schmitz, Practical PKM (published 2026-06-26). Compass is an independent implementation of what the video describes. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Practical PKM, the LifeHQ vault, or the Obsidian Starter Vault, and contains none of their files or text. See CREDITS.md.

Quick start

  1. Download the zip from Releases, or clone this repository. The repository root is the vault.
  2. Open the folder in Obsidian (Open folder as vault).
  3. When Obsidian asks about Restricted mode, click Turn off. Then run the command Reload app without saving so the ten community plugins and Life OS light up. Life OS opens automatically after reload.
  4. Open 00 Dashboards/Setup.md. It checks itself and tells you what is left.
  5. Tonight: Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+D opens today's note, Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Q asks the questions. Answer 1 to 10, write one line under ## Journal. Stop there. Everything else waits 30 days.

Notes tagged example are seed data so the dashboards render on first open; the Setup checklist reminds you to delete them.

What is inside

00 Dashboards/   Setup, Compass Dashboard, Habit Canvas, Daily Questions, Task, Projects, Boards, Assistant
01 Journal/      Daily, Weekly, Quarterly periodic notes
02 Retreats/     YYYY-QN Personal Retreat notes (wheel of life in their properties)
03 Planning/     Life Theme, Core Values (+ roles), Ideal Week
04 Projects/     project notes (#project/<slug> tasks) and the Projects Board
05 People/       people notes (#p/<slug> tasks, #discuss roll-ups)
06 Writing/      Newsletters, YouTube Scripts, Articles, Course Content, each with a Kanban board
07 Library/      Book Notes (quotes with block ids for embedding)
08 Tasks/        Tasks.md, the master list you capture to and never read
09 Reading/      Reading Plan, Chapters, Verses, Study Notes, Topics (Bible is the worked example)
Prompts/         16 prompts for your AI agent, one note per recurring job
Templates/       Templater templates; property lists come from Meta/Compass Config.md
Meta/            Compass Config.md (the single config), views/*.js (dashboard widgets), version.md
Guide/           principles, plugins, one page per workflow, build order, agents, MCP, prompt library
wiki/, inbox/    knowledge layer for the claude-obsidian plugin (optional; plain Markdown without it)
scripts/         reading plan generator, Bible splitter, template build and verify
  .github/         CI workflow (verify) and issue templates
CHANGELOG.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, CREDITS.md, LICENSE, LICENSE-GUIDE.md, THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
.claude-obsidian.json  marker for the claude-obsidian knowledge layer
AGENTS.md        rules and folder map for any AI agent; CLAUDE.md and GEMINI.md point to it
.claude/         settings.json: read-only MCP tool allowlist for Claude Code (no secrets)
.mcp.example.json  how to point an agent at Obsidian's MCP server (Local REST API)

Meta/Compass Config.md is the single config: questions, habits, wheel areas, folders, prefixes, birthdate. Dashboards discover dq_*, habit_*, and wheel_* properties by prefix, so changing the lists there changes the whole vault.

The seven workflows

# Workflow Where it lives Guide
1 Journaling with Daily Questions 01 Journal/Daily, Templates/Daily Note.md, Templates/Daily Questions Prompt.md, questions in Meta/Compass Config.md Guide/03 Workflow - Journaling and Daily Questions.md
2 Quarterly personal retreat 02 Retreats, Templates/Personal Retreat.md Guide/04 Workflow - Personal Retreat.md
3 Multi-scale planning 01 Journal/{Daily,Weekly,Quarterly}, 03 Planning Guide/05 Workflow - Multi-Scale Planning.md
4 Habit tracking habit_* properties in the daily note, 00 Dashboards/Habit Canvas.md Guide/06 Workflow - Habit Tracking.md
5 Daily reading (Bible as the worked example) 09 Reading Guide/07 Workflow - Daily Reading.md
6 Task management 08 Tasks/Tasks.md, 04 Projects, 05 People, 00 Dashboards/Task Dashboard.md Guide/08 Workflow - Task Management.md
7 Writing 06 Writing/* with Kanban boards Guide/09 Workflow - Writing.md

Layered on top: the Compass dashboard (Guide/10), Kanban boards (Guide/13), AI in the vault (Guide/14, Guide/20), the claude-obsidian knowledge layer (Guide/15), research and publishing with Web viewer, SEO, and Vault Lens (Guide/16, Guide/17), and the Obsidian MCP bridge (Guide/19). Start with Guide/00 Start Here.md.

The layering rule: pick one workflow, probably the daily journaling, get it working for 30 days, then layer the next one. Setup.md enforces that order.

Plugins included

All ten community plugins are bundled under .obsidian/plugins/, each with a recorded version and license, and are listed as enabled. Byte-for-byte upstream provenance is a separate release check. The first-party life-os-app plugin is installed alongside them. Details and the first-open checklist are in Guide/02 Plugins.md.

Plugin Id Version License
Dataview dataview 0.5.68 MIT
Templater templater-obsidian 2.25.0 AGPL-3.0
Periodic Notes periodic-notes 0.0.17 MIT
QuickAdd quickadd 2.23.0 MIT
Tasks obsidian-tasks-plugin 8.4.0 MIT
Kanban obsidian-kanban 2.0.51 GPL-3.0
Omnisearch omnisearch 1.30.1 GPL-3.0
Local REST API obsidian-local-rest-api 5.1.0 MIT
Agent Client agent-client 0.12.1 Apache-2.0
SEO seo 0.5.6 MIT

The first-party Life OS application (life-os-app) is separately versioned and licensed under MIT. It is the native navigation, capture, and live-dashboard layer. See Guide/21 Life OS Application.md.

Upstream repositories and release tags are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Obsidian itself is not included.

AI agents in the vault

Build and release

verify

The template is built from the maintainer's live vault, never edited in the built copy:

python3 scripts/verify_release_safety.py
python3 scripts/build_template.py --out ../life-os-releases --name LifeOS-1.1.0-candidate --version 1.1.0 --zip
python3 scripts/verify_template.py ../life-os-releases/LifeOS-1.1.0-candidate

build_template.py copies with drop rules, keeps only example-tagged notes in user folders, resets defaults, strips machine state from plugin settings, adds the version and a one-page workspace, then verifies and zips. verify_template.py exits 1 on any failure: forbidden strings (names, paths, keys, certificates, em dashes), plugin settings (Local REST API exactly {"enableInsecureServer": true}, Agent Client with no sessions and auto-allow off, Omnisearch HTTP server off, QuickAdd online features off), plugin folders with LICENSE, notices matching manifests, referenced paths and wikilinks resolving, Meta/views/*.js syntax under Node, and total size under 20 MB. The verify workflow runs it on every push and pull request. Maintainer checklist: scripts/RELEASE.md. Changes: CHANGELOG.md.

There is no transactional in-place upgrader. Back up the complete vault, extract a new release beside it, and migrate personal content, custom configuration, and templates with conflict review. Do not replace the working .obsidian folder wholesale. A backup is not proven until a restore has been tested. See scripts/RELEASE.md and Guide/23 Native Acceptance.md.

Credits and license

Workflows follow Mike Schmitz's public video (Practical PKM). Daily questions: Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter, Triggers (2015). Multi-scale planning: Cal Newport. Full credits in CREDITS.md.

Code, templates, dashboards, scripts, and configuration are MIT (LICENSE). The prose in Guide/ is CC BY 4.0 (LICENSE-GUIDE.md). Third-party plugin binaries under .obsidian/plugins/ keep their own licenses; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Community rules: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md. Security: SECURITY.md.

compass (AgriciDaniel/compass)

Searching Database…

984 ·GitHub
Compass
Что это такое?Compass — это готовый шаблон хранилища Obsidian, который превращает его в Life OS: вечерние вопросы для дневника, квартальные ретриты, планирование, привычки, задачи, чтение, письмо и ИИ-ассистент — всё в обычном Markdown.
То есть это не приложение, которое я устанавливаю, а папка, которую я открываю в Obsidian?Именно так — корень репозитория и есть хранилище. В него входят десять сторонних плагинов сообщества плюс собственный плагин Life OS для навигации, быстрого добавления заметок и живых дашбордов, при этом все ваши данные остаются обычным Markdown со свойствами.
Как его настроить?Скачайте zip из Releases или склонируйте репозиторий, откройте папку в Obsidian через «Open folder as vault», нажмите Turn off в Restricted mode, затем выполните «Reload app without saving». Дальше чек-лист в Setup.md подскажет, что осталось сделать.
Нужно ли что-то ещё, кроме самого Obsidian?Только Obsidian 1.13.1 или новее (в комплект не входит). Все десять плагинов сообщества лежат прямо в папке; для ИИ-функций понадобится свой локальный агент, например Claude Code, Codex или Gemini CLI.
Безопасно ли строить на этом свою жизнь прямо сейчас?Это кандидат в релизы, а не стабильная публичная версия, и обновления «на месте» не предусмотрены: чтобы обновиться, нужно забэкапить всё хранилище и вручную перенести свои данные в свежий релиз.
А на телефоне оно работает?Пока лишь частично: совместимость основных дашбордов с мобильными устройствами ещё требует проверки на реальных устройствах, а Agent Client и локальный API-мост работают только на десктопе.
ИИ-функциям нужны API-ключи? И уходит ли что-то с моего компьютера?Ключей в шаблоне нет: Local REST API генерирует ключ при первом запуске для конкретной установки, и вы храните его вне хранилища. Агенты подключаются локально через Agent Client Protocol или MCP-мост с 16 инструментами.
Могу ли я использовать и адаптировать это для своего хранилища?Да — код, шаблоны, дашборды, скрипты и настройки под лицензией MIT, тексты Guide — под CC BY 4.0, а входящие плагины сохраняют свои лицензии (MIT, AGPL-3.0, GPL-3.0, Apache-2.0).
Какие семь рабочих процессов в него входят?Дневник с ежедневными вопросами, квартальные личные ретриты, многоуровневое планирование, отслеживание привычек, ежедневное чтение (Библия — разобранный пример), управление задачами и письмо на канбан-досках — у каждого свой гид внутри хранилища.
Там много всего — нужно ли осваивать всё сразу?Нет. Правило наслоения гласит: выберите один процесс, скорее всего ежедневный дневник, ведите его 30 дней, затем добавляйте следующий; чек-лист Setup как раз следит за этим порядком.
Могу ли я менять вечерние вопросы и привычки?Да. Meta/Compass Config.md — единый файл настроек для вопросов, привычек, сфер колеса жизни, папок и префиксов, а дашборды находят свойства по префиксу, так что правка этих списков переконфигурирует всё хранилище.
Как ИИ-ассистент не портит мои заметки?AGENTS.md задаёт правила безопасности (сначала читай, потом пиши; спрашивай перед правкой; никогда не переписывай текст дневника и планирования), каждая правка показывается как diff, требующий одобрения, а авто-разрешение по умолчанию выключено.
What are similar projects?Life-Compass-Obsidian-CN, second-brain-os, obsidian-mind, claude-obsidian, obsidian-second-brain, My-Brain-Is-Full-Crew, foam, logseq
Which topics is it in?habit-tracker, pkm, second-brain, personal-knowledge-management, kanban, obsidian, task-management, writing, ai-assistant, template, note-taking, local-first
Creator
AgriciDaniel
Size
3.2 MB
Stars
984
Updated
CommitSep 13Releasev1.0.2Aug 26
Age
1mo
Commits · 90 Days