vaultcraft
study · work · research
A plugin for ChatGPT and Codex that turns any scattered materials (lecture slides, meeting notes, project docs, research papers) into a navigable, richly visual Obsidian knowledge vault. Hover-visible definitions, embedded PDFs, extracted figures, ELI5 analogies, comparison tables, Kanban boards, stakeholder profiles, and optional spaced-repetition flashcards.
Now in the official ChatGPT plugin directory. vaultcraft passed OpenAI's review, so you can add it from ChatGPT without touching GitHub. The same listing covers Codex.
Quick start · How to use · Vault types · Examples · Conventions · Roadmap · Contributing · Project page · AI note taking guide
Why this exists
Most people take notes as they go. By the time you need them — before an exam, in a client meeting, writing a report — those notes are scattered across PDFs, Notion pages, Google Docs, and handwritten pages. The information is there; it just isn't retrievable under pressure.
This agent inverts the workflow: take the same source material you already have and produce a linked knowledge graph optimised for how you actually use it.
- Students: hover over any wikilink → see the definition. Open
Tables.md → recite the elevator pitch for every concept comparison the night before an oral exam.
- Professionals: open the Kanban board → see active projects and open actions. Click a stakeholder → see their profile, meeting history, and stored documents in one note.
- Researchers: browse
Papers/ → every paper linked to the concepts it introduces, every concept linked back to the papers that define it.
The agent is subject-agnostic. Point it at law cases, anatomy, NLP slides, client briefings, or company research — the structure adapts to your vault type.
What it does
Point vaultcraft at a folder of materials. It asks a few intake questions, then runs a ten-phase pipeline:
- Intake. Chip-style questions for vault type, format, depth, language, deadline, sources, and output path. Nothing touches disk yet.
- Read and extract figures. Opens every PDF, PPTX, notebook, and markdown file. Extracts concept names, formulas, code patterns, and section headings. For PDFs containing diagrams or charts, runs
pdfimages to extract embedded figures, names them descriptively, and copies them to Assets/ for inline use in notes.
- Plan. Proposes the folder layout and the full list of notes to write. Waits for confirmation.
- Write atomic notes. One concept per file, each opened by a
> [!definition] callout so Obsidian shows the answer in hover preview without a click. Work vaults get Meeting, Company, Person, Decision, and Project templates instead.
- Write lecture / topic sheets. Per session or topic: TL;DR callout, narrative, eight to twelve potential exam questions (studies) or action items and decisions (work).
- Embed source PDFs. Automatically copies source materials into the vault, converts
.pptx / .docx to PDF via LibreOffice, and inserts an inline callout in each note. Obsidian renders the original deck or document inline above your typed summary. Extracted figures embed at the relevant section of each note.
- Cartography (low priority). Optional JSON Canvas concept map.
- Hub and dashboard. Studies vaults: entry MOC +
Tables.md for oral exams. Work vaults: Kanban board (00 - Dashboard.md) with active projects, open actions, and recent meetings via Dataview.
- Quality pass. Broken links, bidirectional link audit (concept ↔ lecture), depth check, orphans, quality report (notes missing definition / example / flashcards).
Typical run on a twelve-lecture course: about thirty minutes, ~150 atomic notes, ~3,000 wikilinks. A work vault with 10 stakeholders and 20 meetings: ~45 minutes. Output is a working Obsidian vault you open the same day.
Vault types
The first intake question — what kind of vault is this? — determines folder structure, note templates, plugins, graph colours, and dashboard style.
| Type | Built for | Key outputs |
|---|
studies | Exam prep, course notes | Concept notes, lecture sheets, Tables.md, exam questions, optional flashcards |
work | Professional knowledge base | Kanban board, meeting notes, stakeholder profiles, decision log, project hubs, Documents/ per person |
research | Literature review, paper notes | Paper notes, concept notes, hypotheses, bibliography-compatible frontmatter |
personal | Hobbies, life skills, curiosity | Topic notes, practice logs, ELI5 analogies, optional flashcards |
reference | Technical docs, runbooks, API docs | Terse procedure notes, code-heavy, no analogies |
teaching | Course prep | Lesson plans, concept notes with "How to introduce this" and "Common misconceptions" sections |
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
