Vault Structure: Rooms, Knowledge, Calendar

How a WhyVault is organised: rooms for each area of your life, knowledge, calendar and system notes – plus the five rules that keep it clear.

When you create your vault you choose: start with the WhyVault template, with the PARA template or with an empty vault. The WhyVault template gives you the structure described on this page. It comes from a real working vault and is freely available as an Obsidian template.

The one sentence

The vault answers why. Your task tool answers what comes next.

The vault holds no tasks, no deadlines, no progress bars. The test for anything you want to keep:

Does it have an owner and a due date? → Task tool
Does someone still need to understand it in six months? → Vault

The folders

0_Inbox/          everything unsorted, emptied weekly
1_Knowledge/      timeless, flat, shared
  People/  Organisations/  Software/  Notes/  Sources/  Maps/  Principles/
2_Calendar/       dated, thin
  Days/  Reviews/
3_Rooms/          everything with clear boundaries – the only level with context
  <context>/      e.g. Work, Ventures, Private – each with _Closed/
8_Attachments/    files without context
9_System/         identity, templates, working rules for agents
MANUAL.md         how the vault works

The five rules

The vault answers why, the task tool answers what comes next. Otherwise you have two truths and maintain the worse one.

Room or collection? Does the thing have a history – are decisions made, is there a timeline? Then it is a room. Is it material you maintain? Then it is a collection in 1_Knowledge with a map as its entry point.

The boundary rule. Link freely inside a room. Outside it, link only to 1_Knowledge, never from room to room. That way you can hand over a room as a folder.

Don't build the scaffolding in advance. A new room has exactly one file, the overview. 01 Decisions/, 02 Meetings/ and the rest appear when you need them.

Knowledge belongs to no room. A person shows up at work and in private life and still exists only once.

A room

A room starts with one file:

3_Rooms/Ventures/WhyVault/
└── 00 Overview – WhyVault.md    purpose, boundaries, people involved, who decides what,
                                 timeline, open questions

When needed, more is added – always with these names:

Folder/file	Created with
`01 Decisions/`	the first decision that carries weight
`02 Meetings/`	the first conversation someone must understand later
`03 Knowledge/`	the first room-specific document
`08 Attachments/`	the first file
`99 Handover – <Room>.md`	when there is really something to hand over

The only status is the location: a room sits in <context>/ or in <context>/_Closed/.

The system area

9_System/Identity/ holds four files that every connected agent reads first:

File	Answers
`USER.md`	Who you are and how you work
`SOUL.md`	How it should sound when something is written for you
`IDENTITY.md`	Who the assistant should be for you: mission, boundaries, default behavior
`CONTEXTS.md`	Which worlds you move in – these are the folders under `3_Rooms`

You don't write them by hand: an interview prompt in 9_System/Setup/ has your agent ask you questions and creates the drafts.

The PARA template

The alternative for everyone who thinks in projects: PARA by Tiago Forte sorts notes by how close they are to action – not by topic.

0_Inbox/          everything unsorted, emptied weekly
1_Projects/       efforts with a goal and a deadline – they end
2_Areas/          ongoing responsibilities, e.g. health, finances
3_Resources/      topics and material for later
4_Archive/        anything inactive from the three folders above
9_System/         agent instructions, templates for project, area, resource
Start here.md     your way in

Every folder explains in a README.md what goes in, and comes with an example. Unlike the WhyVault template, PARA keeps projects with a deadline, a status and next actions.

9_System/Agent instructions.md tells every connected agent how to file things: Does it belong to a running project? Does it have a goal and a deadline? Is it an ongoing responsibility, a topic for later, finished? When in doubt, into the inbox. Because agents can't move anything, they mark finished projects with status: done and let you know – you move them to the archive yourself.

The structure