Creator System

Personal Intelligence System for creative professionals. Open-source, MIT-licensed, runs locally on Obsidian + Claude Code. Vault scaffolding + 14 AI skills + 6 ingestion tools that turn your scattered archive into a queryable second brain.

Not a notes app. A layered system that archives source material, builds structured knowledge, tracks projects, and generates outputs — with AI-powered skills that do the heavy synthesis.

"Most AI tools wrap a chatbot around a prompt. This wraps a chatbot around your archive. Output sounds like you because it is you."

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Quick start — three steps

1. Get the kit

git clone https://github.com/mattymostudio/creator-system.git
cd creator-system

Or Code → Download ZIP above, then unzip wherever you keep projects (~/Documents/, ~/code/, anywhere). The folder you end up with is your working vault — no install step, no second copy.

2. Install Obsidian + Claude Code

• Obsidian — free, the editor for your vault
• Claude Code — the AI layer; free tier covers the first session, Claude Max (~$100/mo) recommended once you're loaded up

3. Open Claude Code, point it at this folder, type let's go

Claude reads CLAUDE.md, sees you're a fresh user, and walks you through:

1. Personalizing the vault with your name + practice
2. Dropping your first source into vault/01_INBOX/To Process/
3. Running /ingest to process it
4. Running /diarize to build your first canon page
5. Initializing git so everything you do is undoable

Total: ~10 minutes to a working personal intelligence system you own.

Tip: open this same folder in Obsidian alongside Claude Code. You'll see the markdown files Claude is writing in real time, and you can edit any of them directly.

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What's in here

creator-system/                  ← you're here; this IS your vault
├── vault/                       ← 10-folder layered knowledge system
│   ├── .claude/commands/        ← 14 AI skills
│   ├── 00_HOME/                 ← Navigation hubs and system state
│   ├── 01_INBOX/                ← Drop new material here
│   ├── 02_SOURCES/              ← Raw source material (immutable)
│   ├── 03_SOURCE_NOTES/         ← Processed extracts
│   ├── 04_CANON/                ← Synthesized knowledge (the wiki)
│   ├── 05_PROJECTS/             ← Project tracking
│   ├── 06_OUTPUTS/              ← Reusable deliverables
│   ├── 08_RESEARCH/             ← External topic knowledge
│   ├── 09_IDEAS/                ← Ideas pipeline
│   └── 10_META/                 ← System rules + templates
│
├── tools/                       ← 6 ingestion pipelines
│   ├── photo-processor/         ← iPhone photos → events, faces, locations
│   ├── takeout-processor/       ← Google Takeout → contacts, timeline
│   ├── chatgpt-ingest/          ← ChatGPT export → topic index
│   ├── facebook-ingest/         ← Facebook archive → message threads
│   ├── press-ingest/            ← Press URLs → cleaned local archive
│   └── granola-ingest/          ← Granola meetings → rolling source-note
│
├── README.md                    ← You are here
├── CLAUDE.md                    ← Instructions for Claude Code
├── RECIPES.md                   ← 23 step-by-step things to try
├── Standard Operating Procedure.md   ← Daily use, weekly maintenance, manual fallbacks
└── Data Sources to Gather.md    ← What raw materials to collect

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How it works

Material flows through layers, gaining structure at each step:

raw source → source note → canonical knowledge → project / output

Not every source becomes a note. Not every note becomes canon. The system is selective by design — fewer, better pages.

Sources have trust levels. When they disagree:

• Journals win for emotional truth and lived experience
• Business documents win for dates, amounts, and what actually happened
• Press tells you what others think happened — useful, but not ground truth
• Your interviews tell you what you chose to say publicly — performance, not diary

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AI skills

Command	What it does
/ingest	Process a raw source through the full vault pipeline
/diarize	Build a comprehensive page from all sources about a subject
/enrich	Fill out a thin page by finding all related sources
/vault-lint	Run 10 structural checks and write a report
/improve	Analyze patterns and propose system improvements
/emerge	Surface ideas the vault implies but never stated
/challenge	Pressure-test a belief against the vault's own evidence
/connect	Find hidden bridges between two topics
/drift	Compare stated priorities vs actual activity
/ideas	Vault-wide brainstorm grounded in what the vault knows
/council	12 professional personas evaluate a project or idea
/recap	Close out a session with a dated "what changed / next / loose ends" entry
/autoresearch	Autonomous research loop on an external topic
/granola	Synthesize Granola meeting pulls (pairs with the granola-ingest tool)

You don't need to type the slash. Plain English works — "build me a canon page about Devon" runs the same path as /diarize "Devon".

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Reference docs

• RECIPES.md — 23 step-by-step recipes (input → tool → skill → output) by data type. Open this first.
• Data Sources to Gather.md — What to collect and where each type goes
• Standard Operating Procedure.md — Daily use, weekly maintenance, manual fallbacks
• vault/10_META/AGENTS.md — The vault constitution: page types, naming conventions, source hierarchy, frontmatter schemas

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Without Claude Code

The system works entirely by hand. Open vault/00_HOME/Start Here.md in Obsidian and follow Standard Operating Procedure.md. Every workflow has a manual equivalent — AI just makes it faster.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE. Attribution to Matty Mo Studio appreciated, not required.

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Status: Early version, currently in private beta with Cohort 01 of the Creator System cohort program. Active development. The kit is yours to use — the system is opinionated, but the data is always yours, on your laptop, in plain text.