Identity & Greeting

The Celestial Vault has a personalized greeting that appears on the empty tab:

*Hello. Karl.*

(Your name in place of "Karl", and your chosen prefix in place of "Hello".)

This page covers the two settings that control it.

Setting Your Nickname

Settings → Celestial Vault → Identity → Nickname

Whatever you type here becomes the name used in the greeting. Use:

• Your first name
• A nickname
• An alter ego
• A single letter, if that's your vibe

The greeting updates live — the moment you finish typing, the empty tab refreshes with your new name.

You can also set the nickname during The Welcome Experience when you first install the vault. That's just a shortcut to the same setting.

Setting Your Greeting Prefix

Settings → Celestial Vault → Identity → Greeting prefix

The salutation that opens the greeting. Options to consider:

• Hello (the default)
• Hi
• Hej
• Heya friend (Karl's voice — feel free to borrow)
• Welcome back
• Bonjour
• Howdy
• Yo
• An emoji + word: 🌅 Morning

The setting accepts any plain text — no validation. So you can get creative.

Where The Greeting Appears

The combined <Greeting>. <Name>. text shows up in:

1. The Empty Tab

In gradient text, center of the screen, between brackets:

*Hello. Karl.*

This is the most prominent placement. It's what you see every time you have no note open.

2. (Various Subtle Places)

A few other interface accents pull from your nickname / greeting:

• The Celestial settings tab header
• Some modal headers in the welcome flow (if you reset and re-run)
• Some Notice-style toasts ("Hello, Karl. Today's daily note is ready.")

Changing It Later

You can change either field any time. There's no penalty, no reset, no "are you sure?" The settings are pure cosmetic.

If you want to reset to defaults:

• Nickname → empty (which falls back to "friend")
• Greeting prefix → Hello

A Note On The Bracket Syntax

You'll notice the greeting uses double square brackets in its text styling:

*Hello. Karl.*

This is decorative, not functional. It mimics the visual texture of a *wikilink* — fitting for a vault built around wikilinks — but it doesn't actually link anywhere. It's just text styled to look like that.

Designing Your Own Vibe

Can I Make The Greeting Multi-Line?

Not directly via the settings tab. But you can edit 00 Dashboard/Welcome.md (the Welcome Dashboard — see The Welcome Dashboard) and add whatever you want there. That note acts as your "if I want a more elaborate landing page" canvas.

Some users pin the Welcome Dashboard as their default tab and treat that as their greeting surface, leaving the empty tab in its quieter form.

A Privacy Aside

Your nickname stays entirely local. It's stored in:

.obsidian/plugins/celestial-plugin/data.json

It does not sync to any server. License validation pings don't include it. If you sync your .obsidian/ folder between devices, the nickname comes along — otherwise it stays per-device.

Up Next

• The Empty-Tab Atmosphere — where the greeting lives
• The Welcome Dashboard — the alternate landing surface
• The Settings Tab — the full settings overview