Hack your Obsidian with AI: the best note taking and writing tool combination so far (GUIDE + SETUP)

Are you the only one who thinks Obsidian is difficult to set up?

Or when you thought you had the right setup and management method,

you still find your node messy and difficult to find what you really need.

Trust me, you are not alone.

That's why I abandoned Obsidian three years ago in trying

to find another replacement.

But the reason why I'm here today is that I found the best tool

combination that could help you hack your Obsidian with AI capability.

You can ask questions about your note content, you can do comparison,

analysis, or even automatic create links between notes.

It will also have an AI writing assistant and file manager for your Obsidian.

Now Obsidian is back as my favorite note taking and writing

tool again, thanks to AI.

Hi friends.

My name is Tony.

I'm an AI engineer and a tech nerd enthusiastic in learning

and productivity hacks.

Around four years ago, I started to use Obsidian and hoped that

I could build my perfect note taking system, aka a second brain.

After spending loads of time in learning how to manage files,

tags, and folders, I gave up.

The reason is simple.

You can check my obsidian when I use my obsidian, the files get growing,

the folders get growing, and you'll just have a messy rough view, and

it's really difficult for you to find the right content when you need it.

Although I try to manage, but I have to keep writing index page for every

folder, and it's just time consuming.

Yes, I know someone can manage all this neatly, but unfortunately, not me.

Until three months ago, I realized that I can combine my AI coding

called PILOT cursor with Obsidian to solve all of my pain points.

Let me show you.

since you already know obsidian, let me introduce you cursor.

So cursor is an IDE.

So what is an IDE?

The IDE is actually a text editor for code.

Compared with traditional IDEs.

Cursor have a very well designed AI co pilot add in.

I can use AI to help me write code, edit code, even create code files for me.

If we further ask questions, what is code, it is actually a raw text file written in

computer language, like Python or Java.

When we look back to obsidian notes, it's actually text file too, just in Markdown

language, then why not use AI editor to help me further leverage my notes?

Okay, let me show you how to set it up.

So first of all, you will need to have a vault created.

It's basically a folder.

That store all your markdown files.

Let's create a folder.

Cool.

Obsidian.

Browse.

Let's make a desktop.

And here we go.

We create a new vault.

So under the new vault, . I will create a new folder called resource

and notes.

Now we have two folders.

Let's open the hack obsidian folder.

In your computer, it will have the same two folders created and what I will do

is that I will copy a couple of files I did research AI implementation cases.

Now it is already pasted.

Let's check our obsidian.

See, we have all of our information collected here.

Since in theory

now we can open the same folder with cursor as well.

Let me open a cursor window.

All right, we have a cursor here.

Let's open a folder, hack obsidian.

Open it.

All right, we will be open our obsidian nodes under the IDE as well.

If you look closely, you will find it's basically a markdown text file,

but that is a raw markdown does not look as good as the one in obsidian.

Okay, but they are the same.

The foundation idea is really simple.

We use the folder created from Obsidian as the database.

Two of those applications will share the same note folder.

They can simultaneously read and write.

Right.

Let's check the, say, I will write another note,

file test note from obsidian.

Okay.

And you can find it here, right?

This is

it is already updated.

Okay, after the setup, let's come back to the use cases.

The first use case is the one I benefit the most.

In the old days every time you want to search a note from Obsidian, it's usually

a pain because you can only use keywords.

If you use Obsidian long enough, you will find that there are just

too many nodes in your Obsidian.

This is the node I took for Prince2 study.

There's just too many of them.

But after three years later, when I came back and I would like to make use of

the note that I took three years ago, in the most cases, I just couldn't remember

which keyword I should use to search.

As in this case, I would like to know that, how can I use Prince

two principle to create three person team to handle my project?

But the first thing I come into mind is a question, not a keyword, but in

obsidian, you can only search the keyword.

For example, here, I use the word team member.

It comes up the row definitions rather than the answer.

I want to know.

If I came to the map feature.

It's still messy as well.

Now with AI, this pain can be solved in seconds.

Let me show you.

You see that all of my notes was stored in this folder B03Q01, there's

a lot of notes, but my question is that how can I use Prince2 principle

to create an effective team.

You can hack this with two steps.

The first one is at a folder at the copilot interface.

Folder, say, PRINCE 2.

What AI will do is it will read every files, every

notes and give you the answer.

You don't need to think hard about which keyword you use or which

tag you set up three years ago.

Okay, this will be the question I will normally ask.

If I have three person in my team, and how can I apply Princeton

principle to set up the row for each team member, show me your reference.

Tips.

Don't press enter simply.

You will need to use this code based function press command and enter.

Why you will know soon.

It will refer to every potential file.

See, this is the reference that I created for you.

Let's have a quick look at the AI's response.

AI's response.

I will help you apply Prince2 principle to set up rows for a

3 person digital project team.

Based on the Prince2 documentation, this is the first note I took.

And let's just simply click it.

The start line is 228.

Two two eight.

Okay, the end line is 236, 236.

Situation 0 1, Simpler project.

For simple projects, you will have less people, then you will need to

set up multiple rows to one person.

The suggestion here is that rows can be combined, but not eliminated.

All right.

So based on my notes, the person one should be the senior manager

combines roles of executive, senior user, and project assurance.

The second one is technical lead.

The third one is project manager.

So what AI can do here is that it can save you tremendous amount of time that

you don't need to think of the keywords.

Okay, let's come back to case number two.

In the older days, if you do a lot of reading and research, especially

like theme reading, you will need to compare different articles.

But with an AI copilot built in cursor, you can basically automate the process.

Let's have a look at the case I've prepared.

At this case there was a blog on Google that showed 185 AI application cases.

I read all of them and create like six snapshot notes and highlighted

some examples that I am interested in.

Unfortunately, at that time, I did not make a clear file name.

So after like two or three months, I just couldn't remember why

did I put them in separate files?

Now what you can do is use AI to help you compare and analysis.

So write your prompt here.

First foremost.

We were at a folder say resource and ask AI to help us compare those files and

tell me what are the major difference.

Okay.

Remember to press command and enter.

It will refer to.

The file.

Each snapshot focus on a different aspect of AI implementation.

All right, so the snapshot one is code agent, focus on developer productivity

and code related improvements.

The snapshot two is security agent.

Let's check if that is true.

File two.

Okay, let me give you a little bit of space.

Snapshot two.

Security agent assist security operation using Gemini in security

for accelerate build generative AI copilot for security analysis.

Yes, that is true.

And check the snapshot three employee agent snapshot three employee agents.

builds AI products to support nonprofits.

Customizable content center solution for its business customers?

That's true.

So if in this case, you can basically ask AI to help you organize your content.

Case number three, your note assistant.

So since you have the full access to your files in your folder, the AI

assistant can help you even create new note files based on what you have.

Let's have a look.

There is one pain that we just can't avoid in daily uses of Obsidian or

any other note system, which is your file management AKA to separate your

note files or combine your note files.

In this case, if I would like to combine those six files, but with a different

viewing angles, say, this is a co agent, creative agent, customer agent, if I

would like to have two files to focus on whether this case is for enterprise

employee support or for customer support.

I need to read case by case and copy and paste in another file.

Say what I can only do is say report employment

support.

And find one.

It help the employees save time, copy it and paste it, then copy it and paste it.

This will take forever.

Can we use AI to help us to do the job?

Yes, of course we can.

This is one of the most dope function I found useful.

In this case, there is one new function you will need to use on cursor copilot.

Up right here, there is a composer function.

Click the composer.

Composer is the function that allows AI to operate your file system

Let's have our prompt prepared.

First of all, don't forget to mention about your folder, which is resource.

And we will paste the prompt here.

Reorganize files in the folders and create two new case notes.

I could say, review and reorganize into two cases.

Let's try it out.

See if AI can help you reorganize all the notes we have.

Wow.

It's faster than I expected.

The green one is the new case report was written by AI.

What you need to do is take a review of your new file and click accept,

we have our new files created.

There is one function that makes obsidian is the double link and the

connections between notes, right?

At this state there's no connections between my notes

because I haven't created one.

Take this as an example.

This is the case report that AI has written for me, focusing on

customer experience, support cases.

There's another question I would like to know is that where

does all those cases come from?

What you can do is to create link, like double bracket, say, a security agent.

However, it's still a manual process.

I need to read case by case and find the case in the

other file and create that one.

Again, you can ask AI to help you do that.

It's really simple.

This is the same file.

Customer experience support.

Let me write another section, say reference notes.

You just press command K.

You just say, list reference, file, names, in, double bracket

each.

All right.

See, that works.

Okay great.

It did the job.

Except the last one.

. And delete the last one.

Okay.

It create the reference link.

Let's go back to our obsidian and see if that works.

Don't remember to save that.

I'm back.

Oh, it's already updated.

Oh my God.

This is great.

Let's check the.

The map, this is link that automatically connected.

So what we do next is to check if that is true.

Always remember to check the result.

So we have a customer service agent, say Alaska airline, say customer agent.

Yes.

Alaska airline.

Great.

Let's say we have hotel report.

I'm not a hundred percent sure where does that come from?

Hotel report, maybe data agents.

All right.

Yes.

Customer agent.

All right.

I IHG hotel reports.

Yes.

In this case after the quick review, we found that AI actually did the job for us.

Fully automated Obsidian.

This still feels amazing to me because as Obsidian user double

direction link is the function I really love, but it is really a pain

I have to manually create each link.

And this is time black hole.

Now our AI co pilot can help us to do the job.

All right, this is my sharing for today.

If you find it useful, please give me a thumb up.

If you would like to watch more AI productivity hacks,

please subscribe to my channel.

Thank you very much for watching and I will see you next time.