The Welcome Experience
A walk through every step of the Celestial Vault’s bespoke welcome experience — license, nickname, greeting, vault import.
The first time you open the Celestial Vault, an animated overlay greets you. This is the Celestial welcome flow — the bespoke onboarding that walks you from "I just unzipped this" to "I have a working vault" in a few minutes.
What You See First
The vault content sits behind a soft, semi-opaque overlay. The center holds:
- A constellation flourish (animated stars)
- The greeting "✦ Welcome to Celestial ✦"
- A short message about the vault
- A Begin button
Click Begin to continue.
The vault stays readable behind the overlay.
You can move the welcome out of the way by interacting with the workspace behind it — the lock is for show, never blocks access. But the recommended path is to walk through the steps in order. They take ~2 minutes.
Step-By-Step
1. Greeting
The opening card. No input needed. Hit Begin.
2. License Entry
Paste your license key. (You received it in your purchase email; you can also retrieve it from your Lemon Squeezy orders page.)
The vault validates against the license server and writes the key to two places:
- The Celestial plugin's settings (unlocking the vault UX)
- The Time Garden plugin's settings (unlocking Eternal AI)
Same key, both products.
You don't enter a license twice. The welcome flow handles the unification — see License Unification & Your 3 Devices for the technical detail.
If you've previously purchased Time Garden Eternal and your existing key is still valid, the welcome flow detects this and skips the license step automatically.
3. Nickname
The welcome asks for a nickname. Use whatever you'd like to be called — your first name, an alias, an alter ego. It appears in:
- The empty-tab greeting (
*Hello. <YourName>.*) - Some settings labels
- A few interface accents
You can change it later in the settings tab.
4. Greeting Prefix
Pair the nickname with a salutation. The default is Hello, but you can pick whatever fits — Hi, Hej, Bonjour, G'day, Heya friend. The empty tab will display:
*<Greeting>. <Name>.*5. Import Your Old Vault (Optional)
If you have an existing Obsidian vault and want your notes to come along, click Import. An OS folder picker opens. Pick the root of your old vault, hit OK, and Celestial recursively copies:
- All
.mdfiles - All embedded images
- The contents of the old vault's
Templates/folder
Everything lands in /old vault/<name>/ inside Celestial. (See Importing Your Old Vault for the full guide.)
You can skip this and run it later from the settings tab instead.
6. The Three Tutorial Cards
Three quick links sit on this screen:
- 🎬 Celestial walkthrough — a video tour of the flagship-specific features
- 🎬 Kepano-style notes — a deep-dive on the categorical philosophy
- 🎬 Time Garden — a video tour of the temporal journaling system
Plus a link to these docs for everything else.
Watch them when you have time. They're not required for the vault to work.
7. Done
A final confirmation, then the welcome closes.
What Happens Next
The welcome dismisses. The empty tab appears with your personalized greeting. Three seconds later, a small notice appears in the top-right:
"Start your journal: press ⌥⇧D for today's daily note."
(Alt + Shift + D on Windows / Linux.)
The daily-note shortcut in the bottom-left status bar shimmers gold for ~6.5 seconds — a one-shot nudge for your first daily note. After it fades, you're alone with the vault.
The shimmer is one-shot.
It fires only on first launch. Once you've created your first daily note (or after the shimmer naturally fades), it never appears again. Don't miss it — but don't worry if you do, the shortcut still works.
If You Want To Re-Run Welcome
You can reset the welcome flow at any time:
- Open Settings → Celestial Vault
- Scroll to the Journal Widget section
- Click Reset onboarding
The celestialWelcomeComplete flag clears. The next time you reload Obsidian, welcome runs again.
(Useful if you want to test a different nickname, change your greeting prefix from the welcome interface instead of settings, or just relive the flourish.)
License Already Active?
If you re-open Celestial later — having already gone through welcome once — the welcome flow doesn't fire. You go straight to the empty tab.
If you ever lose your license key, you can retrieve it from your Lemon Squeezy orders page. To manage active devices (you get 3 device slots with your license), the same orders page lets you deactivate old devices to free a slot.
Up Next
- Importing Your Old Vault — the deeper import walkthrough
- The Empty-Tab Atmosphere — what awaits you after welcome
- License Unification & Your 3 Devices — how the one-key system works