AI Second Brain Setup

This skill walks the user through the full setup from Charlie Hills's MarTech AI newsletter issue "How to build a second brain with Obsidian and Claude Code". The process turns a folder of exports and raw research into a living wiki the user can talk to from their phone.

The setup has three steps. The user can do all three or pick one — confirm at the start which they want.

1. AI Brain — export ChatGPT and Claude history, organise it in Obsidian as tagged, linked markdown
2. Karpathy Wiki — set up raw/ and wiki/ folders with Karpathy's CLAUDE.md instruction file so Claude Code can compile a living wiki from raw research
3. Living Wiki — add MCP connectors (Gmail, NotebookLM, Granola), set up iMessage Channels, scaffold the /today, /ideas, /create slash commands

How to use this skill

The user is most likely a non-technical newsletter reader. Many will be opening Terminal for the first time. Default to plain English, never assume CLI familiarity, and explain what each command does before running it.

The skill orchestrates a conversation. At each step there are things Claude Code can do (create folders, download files, install other skills, scaffold commands) and things only the user can do (request a data export from OpenAI, grant Full Disk Access in macOS System Settings, log in to NotebookLM in a browser). Be explicit about which is which. Pause and wait when the ball is in the user's court.

If the user says "skip step 1, I've already done it" or "just do step 3", honour that. Confirm what's already in place, then jump in.

Step 0: Pre-flight check