The argument in one line.
Plain markdown notes are excellent for storage and for AI to read but useless for actually seeing the state of a business, and describing the dashboard you want to Claude Code in plain English is now a faster path to a custom visual tool than configuring a generic table view.
Read if. Skip if.
- You keep your business or personal knowledge in a folder of Obsidian or markdown notes and are tired of hunting through folders or staring at a plain table view to find anything.
- You want to build small custom internal tools, like dashboards, trackers, or status boards, but don't know how to code and don't want to touch a terminal.
- You already use Claude Code for programming projects and are curious what else it can build outside of traditional software.
- You don't use Obsidian or markdown-based notes — the specific plugin-building steps won't transfer directly.
- You're looking for a finished, downloadable dashboard template rather than a process for building your own.
The full version, fast.
A solo business owner runs everything from a folder of Obsidian markdown notes, but plain files and folders make it hard to see the state of any project, and Obsidian's built-in Bases feature only offers a generic filterable table. Instead of settling for that, she uses Claude Code to build six custom dashboard plugins — one each for her daily agenda, content pipeline, knowledge inbox, projects, and business areas — that render the same notes as visual cards, progress bars, and grouped tabs. The build process needs no coding or terminal knowledge: she describes the dashboard out loud, Claude Code writes the plugin, and she toggles it on inside Obsidian. The prerequisite is consistent frontmatter properties (type, status, area, cycle) on every note, plus picking one visual style upfront so multiple dashboards stay consistent.
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01 · Intro: the problem with folders and Bases
She explains why plain markdown notes and Obsidian's built-in Bases table view fall short, previews the video's 3-part structure, and pitches her paid College of Knowledge community.

02 · The Dashboards I Built
Walkthrough of the custom plugins she had Claude Code build: a Projects dashboard, a Content dashboard, and a Daily OS combining calendar, cycle tracking, and agenda.

03 · Claude Code + Obsidian in Action
How she actually runs Claude Code against her vault, via the Claude desktop app, the VS Code extension, or her own free Hyo Agent Obsidian plugin, without ever touching a terminal.

04 · Building a Dashboard Live (Demo)
She builds a new 'Areas OS' plugin live by describing it out loud, then iterates in conversation with Claude Code to convert accordion sections into filterable tabs.

05 · What I Learned Vibe Coding Obsidian Plugins
Lessons on keeping a consistent visual style guide across plugins, and why every note needs consistent frontmatter properties (type, status, area, cycle) before a dashboard can be built on top of it.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Markdown files are great for storing notes but bad for finding them again — plain folders force you to remember where you put things.
- Obsidian's built-in Bases feature only renders a table view with filters and groupings, which some builders find too limited and visually plain.
- A custom dashboard plugin can show the same underlying data as a table view but as visual metric cards, progress bars, and drag-and-drop status columns.
- Consistent YAML frontmatter properties (type, status, area, cycle) are the structural requirement that makes AI-built dashboards possible — unstructured notes can't be queried reliably.
- Building a working custom Obsidian plugin with Claude Code took about ten to fifteen minutes once the requirements were spoken through out loud.
- Screenshotting dashboard designs from Pinterest or Google Images and handing them to Claude Code as a style reference produces a consistent visual language across multiple plugins.
- Newly built or updated Obsidian plugins require toggling the plugin off and back on to register changes — a full app restart isn't needed after the first install.
- Speaking requirements out loud via a dictation tool rather than typing them let the builder describe a new dashboard in one natural conversational pass.
- The Metadata Menu community plugin turns frontmatter fields into dropdowns and linked-note pickers, adding light schema enforcement on top of plain markdown.
- Six separate purpose-built dashboards beat one giant dashboard because each area of a business needs a different visual shape to be useful.
Give notes structure, then let Claude build the view
A markdown vault only becomes genuinely useful once every note carries the same frontmatter properties, because that structure is what lets an AI coding tool build a real dashboard on top of it.
- Plain folders and files are good for storing notes and letting AI read them, but bad for seeing the state of your work at a glance, you have to remember where everything is.
- Give every note in a system consistent frontmatter properties, a type, a status, an area, a cycle, before trying to build any dashboard on top of it; unstructured notes can't be queried reliably.
- Screenshot dashboard designs you actually like from Pinterest or Google Images and hand them to your AI coding tool as a style reference, so every custom view you build afterward shares one visual language.
- Build one small, purpose-specific dashboard per area of work rather than a single giant dashboard, a daily agenda, a content pipeline, and a project board each need a different visual shape.
- You can describe a new custom tool out loud in plain conversational language and have a working version in ten to fifteen minutes, without writing code or opening a terminal.
- Iterate in small conversational asks, can we do this, can we change that, rather than trying to specify the whole tool up front; each answer sharpens what you actually want.
Terms worth knowing.
- Obsidian Bases
- A built-in Obsidian feature that turns a folder of markdown notes into a filterable, groupable table view — useful but limited to that one table layout.
- Frontmatter / Properties
- A YAML metadata block at the top of a markdown file (fields like type, status, area, cycle) that gives an otherwise plain note structured data a dashboard can query.
- Hyo Agent plugin
- A free community Obsidian plugin, built by the video's creator, that lets you chat with Claude Code directly inside Obsidian instead of switching to a terminal or code editor.
- Metadata Menu
- An Obsidian community plugin that turns frontmatter properties into dropdown selectors and linked-note pickers, making structured fields easier to fill in consistently.
- Cycle
- The creator's term for her recurring quarterly planning period, tracked as a frontmatter property so dashboards can filter and switch between cycles.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
“It turns out files and folders are great for storing things, not so great for finding them again.”
“Every time Claude just said, yes, we could do it.”
“So you don't have to put up with boring database views or hunting through folders trying to find things.”
Word for word.
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
The bait, then the rug-pull.
She runs her entire business out of a folder of Obsidian markdown notes, great for storage, useless for actually seeing what's going on, so instead of settling for Obsidian's built-in table view, she asked Claude Code to build six custom visual dashboards instead.
Named ideas worth stealing.
Six purpose-built dashboard plugins
- Daily OS
- Content OS
- Knowledge OS
- Project OS
- Areas OS
- Threads OS
One dedicated plugin per major area of the business, each reading the same markdown vault but rendering a different visual view (progress bars, metric cards, grouped or tabbed sections) instead of one generic table.
Property-driven note structure
- type
- status
- area
- cycle
Every note carries consistent YAML frontmatter properties so Claude-Code-built plugins can query, group, and filter reliably — plain unstructured markdown can't support real dashboard views.
How they asked for the click.
“check it out at the link description below”
soft mid-intro pitch for her own paid College of Knowledge community, framed as 'what I'm showing today is one piece of something bigger,' repeated as a closing link-in-description CTA at the end











































































