Christiana’s writing, searchable.

Go to claude.ai and sign up with your email. Then choose a plan — Pro is enough to get going. You can change plans any time.

This is the app you’ll talk to. Download it, drag it to Applications, open it, and sign in with the account you just made.

Once you’re in, look at the top of the window: there are tabs like Chat, Cowork and Code. You’ll be using Code — that’s the version of Claude that can open a folder and work inside it.

Free, no account needed. Download, drag to Applications, open it once. If it offers Obsidian Sync or a paid plan, skip — you don’t need them.

The vault uses two small helpers that come with your computer: Python (for the conversion) and git (the undo history). On a Mac you don’t install anything. But the first time Claude uses one of them, macOS may show a pop-up:

On Windows, install Python from python.org (tick Add python.exe to PATH on the first installer screen) and Git for Windows — the Claude app’s Code tab needs it. If either goes wrong, don’t fight it: in step 8 you can tell Claude “install it for me.”

1. Click the download button below. A file called creator-system-main.zip lands in your Downloads.
2. Double-click the zip to unzip it. You get a folder called creator-system-main.
3. Drag that folder into your Documents folder.
4. Rename it to something that’s yours — this guide calls it Writing Vault. (Click the name once, wait a second, type, press Return.)

Open it and look inside. You’ll see:

• a folder called vault — this is your library: numbered folders 00_HOME, 01_INBOX, 02_SOURCES and so on. Your writing will live in here.
• a folder called tools, and a few guide files like RECIPES.md — helpers and manuals for Claude.

Leave everything exactly where it is.

1. Open Obsidian.
2. On the welcome screen click Open folder as vault (or the Open button next to it).
3. Navigate to Documents → Writing Vault → vault — click the inner folder called vault — and click Open.
4. If Obsidian asks about “restricted mode” or trusting the author, choose Trust author and enable plugins. The kit is open source and safe. (It may not ask at all.)

You should now see the numbered folders down the left side. Click 00_HOME → Start Here to have a look. Don’t worry about understanding it all yet.

1. Open the Claude desktop app and click the Code tab at the top.
2. In the area where you type, there are a few settings. Make sure Environment is Local. Then click the Project folder selector and choose Documents → Writing Vault — the outer folder this time, the one that contains vault and tools.
3. You’ll see “Writing Vault” shown near the chat box. That means Claude is standing inside your folder.

First, a quick safety habit that the kit’s own author recommends whenever you download something onto your computer:

I'm not technical and this is my first time here. Please read through this whole folder and tell me, in plain English, what it is and what it does. Is there anything in it that could harm my computer or send my files anywhere? Keep it short.

Read the answer. Then start the built-in setup by typing exactly:

let's go

Claude now walks you through a short conversation, one question at a time. Here is what it will ask and what to say. Use your own words — these are just shapes:

1. “What’s your name, and what do you do?” — e.g. “My name is ___. I’m a writer — essays and personal nonfiction. This vault is going to hold about fifteen years of my writing from Word and Google Docs so I can search it and find the themes.”
2. “What raw material do you have?” — e.g. “Mostly Word documents and Google Docs — hundreds of essays and drafts. Not much else.”
3. “Drop ONE file into the inbox and I’ll ingest it.” — this is the one place to steer it. Don’t drop a single file; paste this instead:

I'm going to bring my whole archive in as one big batch in a moment, following a guide. Please skip the single-file step, set up git now, and tell me when you're ready for the batch.

Claude sets up git (the invisible undo history for the whole folder — it means nothing you do later is unrecoverable) and says it’s ready. That’s the end of setup.

You are collecting copies, not moving anything. Your originals stay exactly where they are. It doesn’t matter how many there are — 40 or 4,000 — and it doesn’t matter how messy the names or folders are.

1. On your Desktop, right-click an empty spot → New Folder. Name it My Writing. Open it and make a folder inside called Word.
2. Find every Word file on the Mac in one go: open a new Finder window, press ⌘+F. In the search bar that appears, make sure This Mac is selected (not just the current folder). In the row of filters, change Kind → Document, and in the box beside it choose Word. The list fills with every Word document on the computer.
3. Click any file in the list, press ⌘+A (select all), then ⌘+C (copy).
4. Open Desktop → My Writing → Word and press ⌘+V (paste). Wait for the copy to finish — a progress bar shows for large batches.
5. Files on an external drive, in a Dropbox/OneDrive/iCloud folder, or attached to old emails? Repeat: find them, copy, paste into the same Word folder. Duplicates are fine.
6. Note the count. Click once on the Word folder and press ⌘+I. Under “General” it says how many items are inside (e.g. 2,314 items). Write that number down — in step 12 you’ll check it against Claude’s count. (Finder counts folders and non-Word files too, so expect “close”, not exact.)

Google Takeout packages up your whole Google Drive as a zip. It’s the reliable way to get years of Docs out at once.

1. Go to Google Takeout. Even if you’re already logged in, Google shows a Verify it’s you screen and asks for your password again — that’s normal for Takeout. Sign in to the account that has your Docs.
2. Click Deselect all at the top of the list.
3. Scroll to Drive and tick its box.
4. Click the Multiple formats button under Drive. Make sure Documents is set to DOCX (the default). Click OK.
5. Optional: click All Drive data included (may just say All data included) to pick only the folders that hold your writing. If your writing is everywhere, leave it.
6. Scroll to the bottom, click Next step.
7. Leave “Send download link via email” and “Export once” (a one-time archive). Set file size to 4 GB so it comes as fewer zips. Click Create export.
8. Wait for the email (minutes to hours depending on how much you have). Download the zip(s), double-click to unzip, and drag the resulting Takeout folder into My Writing — rename it Google.

The vault has an “in tray” folder called To Process. Everything Claude works on starts there. It’s buried a few folders deep, so let Obsidian open it for you instead of hunting for it:

1. In Obsidian’s left sidebar, expand 01_INBOX and right-click the To Process folder.
2. Choose Show in system explorer. A Finder window opens with To Process highlighted. (Don’t see that menu item? No problem — in Finder go to Documents → Writing Vault → vault → 01_INBOX → To Process by hand.)
3. Double-click To Process so you’re inside it (the window will look empty or nearly empty — that’s right).
4. Drag the My Writing folder from your Desktop into that window. It moves off the Desktop and into the vault. Done.
5. Look at Obsidian: My Writing now shows under 01_INBOX → To Process. The Word files inside won’t open in Obsidian yet — it only reads plain text — which is exactly what the next phase fixes.

Before converting anything, have Claude count what’s in the inbox and compare it to the number you wrote down in step 9. This catches a half-finished copy or a folder dropped in the wrong place before an hour of work is built on it.

Look inside vault/01_INBOX/To Process/My Writing and tell me what's there. I want:
- for the Word folder and the Google folder separately: how many .docx files, how many .doc files, and how many other files (by type)
- the total number of Word documents overall
- the oldest and newest file dates you can see
Don't change, move, or convert anything yet — just report.

Does the Word folder total roughly match your Finder count from step 9? A few off is fine (Finder counted the folder itself and any stray files). If it’s way off, the copy probably didn’t finish or the folder went somewhere else — tell Claude: “I expected about 2,300 Word files. Help me figure out where the rest are.” If it matches, carry on.

Word and Google files are locked-up formats. This asks Claude to turn each one into a plain-text Markdown file (which Obsidian can search) while keeping every original untouched — using only what’s already on your Mac. It’s the longest-running step; the batch reports let you watch it move.

In vault/01_INBOX/To Process/My Writing there are Word documents (.docx, and possibly older .doc files) and a Google Takeout export of my Google Docs (also .docx). This is years of my writing.

Please:
1. Convert every document to a Markdown (.md) file. Use only tools already on this Mac — textutil (built in) converts .doc and .docx, and you can write a small Python script if you need to. Do NOT install Homebrew or anything that would ask me for a password. If you truly can't proceed without installing something, stop and tell me what and why first.
2. Do a dry run first: show me the plan (how many files, where they'll go) and wait for me to say "go" before moving anything.
3. Keep each file's original filename as the title (just change the ending to .md). Keep headings, paragraphs AND line breaks — some of these are poems, and a line break inside a stanza must stay a line break (in Markdown that means two spaces at the end of the line). Test this on a poem before doing the whole batch.
4. At the top of each .md file add frontmatter with: title, date, date_source, word_count, source (word or google), and original_path. For the date: use a "Written ..." line or a clear date near the top of the text if there is one; otherwise the document's own date. In date_source just say in plain words which you used (e.g. "Written line in the text" or "file date").
5. File the .md files in vault/02_SOURCES/Writing/, in subfolders by year. If the only date you can find is a file date from this year (that's just when I copied it), treat it as undated and put it in vault/02_SOURCES/Writing/undated/. If two files would get the same name in the same year, add (2), (3) — never overwrite.
6. Move the untouched originals into vault/02_SOURCES/Writing/_originals/ (keep their folder structure) so nothing is lost. Never modify or delete an original.
7. Anything that isn't my writing (spreadsheets, PDFs, images, web pages) — move it to vault/01_INBOX/To Process/_skipped/ and list it for me.
8. Work in batches of about 25 files and give me a one-line progress report after each batch, like: "Batch 3 done — 75 of 2,314 converted." (If I only have a few dozen files there'll only be a couple of lines — that's fine.)
9. Save the script you write in tools/ so we can run it again later. If I run it again with new files in the inbox, only process what's still in the inbox — never redo files already in 02_SOURCES/Writing/.

When you're done, tell me: how many files you converted, how many you skipped (and list them), any you couldn't read, and confirm the My Writing folder is now empty. Then save an undo point with git.

Now you have hundreds of clean files. This creates one page that lists all of them with dates, topics, and a one-line summary — the table of contents for your life’s writing.

Read every file in vault/02_SOURCES/Writing/ and build a page at vault/00_HOME/Writing Index.md.

Make it a table with one row per piece: title (linked to the file), date, word count, topic tags, and a one-sentence summary of what it's about. Sort newest first.

Also add a "tags:" list to each source file's frontmatter — that's fine, it's metadata at the top of the file, not my text. Use a small, consistent vocabulary of about 15 tags total: each piece gets its main subject plus whatever else genuinely applies (usually 2–5). Reuse the same tag names rather than inventing new ones. When you're done, show me the full list of tags with how many pieces have each one, and save an undo point with git.

Open 00_HOME → Writing Index in Obsidian. This is your library catalogue. It’s a normal file — you can edit any line.

This is where it stops being a filing cabinet. The kit ships with skills for exactly this: diarize builds a page about one subject from every source that mentions it; emerge looks for patterns nobody named.

Using the Writing Index and the tags, tell me the 10 subjects I write about most often across all my writing, with a rough count and date range for each. (Subjects — not recurring phrases or people's names, unless a person really is the subject.)

Then, for the top 5, run the diarize routine (vault/.claude/commands/diarize.md) on each one to build a canon page in vault/04_CANON/Practice/Themes/ — the vault's usual place for themes. Skip the web-search step; these are my private essays. Each page should describe the theme, how my thinking about it changed over time, and quote or link the specific pieces where it shows up. Every claim should link back to a source file.

Finally, run the emerge routine (vault/.claude/commands/emerge.md) once and tell me what patterns you found that I might not have noticed. Then save an undo point with git.

• ⌘+⇧+F — search the words inside every file. Results show the matching lines; click to jump.
• ⌘+O — jump to any file by typing part of its title.
• Click a tag (like #grief or #travel) anywhere and Obsidian lists every file with that tag.
• In the file list, right-click the Writing folder → sort by name or by date.
• ⌘+G — the graph view: every file as a dot, every link as a line. Your themes show up as clusters.

Open Claude (Code tab, Writing Vault) and ask in ordinary language. It reads the relevant files before answering, and it can make new pages for you. Some starters:

Find everything I've written about my father. Give me the passages, with a link to each file and its date.

Which pieces from 2018–2021 are about work? Sort them by date and give me one line on each.

Show me my ten longest pieces and my ten shortest.

I think I've written about "leaving" a lot. Am I right? Where, and how did the way I wrote about it change?

Make a page that groups all my writing into 8 themes, with the pieces listed under each.

Pull the best three paragraphs I've ever written about New York into one file so I can reread them.

I want to write a new essay about X. What have I already said about it, and what haven't I said yet?

Two habits that keep the vault healthy, straight from the kit’s authors:

At the end of a working session:

Write a recap of this session to the log — the recap routine (vault/.claude/commands/recap.md). Then save an undo point with git.

Claude writes a dated note of what changed at the top of 00_HOME → Log, so next time you can ask “where was I?”

About once a week:

Run the vault health check — the vault-lint routine (vault/.claude/commands/vault-lint.md). Tell me which findings are real problems versus template noise, and fix the 3 real ones. Then save an undo point with git.

It checks for broken links, duplicates and stray files. The first run always finds a lot; most of it is scaffolding, which is why the prompt asks Claude to sort real from noise.