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The vault root. Resolve it once, before anything else: VAULT_ROOT from the environment, defaulting to ~/Obsidian when unset (echo "${VAULT_ROOT:-$HOME/Obsidian}"). Every vault path below is built from $VAULT_ROOT, as shorthand: shell state does not persist between commands, so substitute the resolved path it printed into every command and file path, never the bare $VAULT_ROOT. If that directory does not exist, stop and say so — never create a vault.

Queries the vault at minimal token cost. Two corpora, but they are not what decides the route:

• Library ($VAULT_ROOT/Library/) — subject = the world: consumed sources, references, learnings. It is the LLM Wiki: pre-synthesised, index-first. Schema: $VAULT_ROOT/Library/CLAUDE.md.
• Profile / Personal ($VAULT_ROOT/Profile/, $VAULT_ROOT/Personal/) — subject = Hassan: self-model, people, goals, career, health. Hand-edited, no index.

If you file an answer back as a page, conform to $VAULT_ROOT/CONVENTIONS.md.

Route by query shape

The corpus does not decide the route — the shape of the question does.

• Named or factual lookup — "Youssef's email", "which solicitor", "what was the offer price". One fact, and it lives in exactly one file. grep -ril for it first, then Read the hit. Do not read an index; there is nothing to synthesise.
• Fuzzy or conceptual discovery — "have I read anything on agent memory", "what do I know about X". You do not know which file, and the answer is a synthesis across several. Read Library/index.md, then drill into sources/ / entities/ / concepts/.

When a question is both, do the lookup first — it is cheaper and it usually settles the question.