personal knowledge operating system, not just wiring tools together.
I’ll keep this grounded in what you actually have:
- Mammouth (API + CLI for workspace actions)
- Obsidian (vault = source of truth) and plugins
- Livesync working
- CoPilot plugin adopted 13th July
- ChatGPT MD working 8th July but gave up after I couldn’t get Openrouter to work
- n8n (automation + glue)
- optional later: LiteLLM, vector DB
🧠 the model: 1 - Capture → 2 - Organise → Distill → Express
Think of this less as a pipeline and more as a loop with different entry points
🔵 3. DISTILL (this is where AI shines)
goal:
turn raw notes into clear thinking
tools:
- Mammouth CLI (very strong here)
- Open WebUI (for deeper reasoning)
workflows:
-
summarise clusters of notes
-
generate:
- key insights
- contradictions
- mental models
-
examples:
- “summarise these 5 notes into principles”
- “what are the gaps in this thinking?”
output:
- refined notes
- “evergreen” ideas
- synthesis documents
🔴 4. EXPRESS (publish / output)
goal:
turn knowledge into something outward-facing
tools:
- n8n (automation)
- Obsidian (source)
- your publish mechanism (Quartz etc.)
workflows:
-
trigger publish:
- manual (button / webhook)
- scheduled
-
n8n:
- pulls note(s)
- formats if needed
- pushes to site
output:
- blog posts
- published notes
- reports
🔁 the key loop
Distilled content often goes back into:
→ Organise (refined notes)
→ Express (publishable)
🧱 your stack (clean architecture)
Here’s how your tools actually relate:
🧩 Mermaid diagram
flowchart TD Capture B -->|Ideas / Chats| D[Capture Layer] C -->|Quick Notes| D Storage D --> F[Obsidian Vault] Distill F --> H[Mammouth CLI] H -->|Summarise / Refactor| F B -->|Deep Reasoning| H Optional infra E --> J[LiteLLM Proxy] J --> K[Mammouth API / Other Models] H --> K B --> K
🧠 how this feels in practice
morning (mobile)
- open WebUI PWA
- explore an idea
- hit “send to vault”
later (desktop)
- open Obsidian
- tidy inbox
- link to existing notes
weekly
- run Mammouth CLI:
- summarise themes
- generate insights
when ready
- trigger n8n:
- publish selected notes
💡 a few sharp optimisations (worth doing early)
1. inbox is critical
- keep it messy
- but empty it regularly
2. don’t over-automate organise
- AI helps
- but you provide meaning
3. automate boundaries, not thinking
good automation:
- save to vault ✅
- publish ✅
bad automation:
- auto-“organise everything” ❌
🚀 if you want next step
I can build you:
- ✅ n8n workflow (capture → vault)
- ✅ folder + tag structure for Obsidian
- ✅ Mammouth CLI prompt pack (distillation recipes)
so this becomes:
not just an idea — but a working system
just tell me which part you want to implement first 👍