The Self-Organizing Vault
The categorical half of the Celestial Vault: a way of working with notes where wikilink categories replace folders and tags entirely.
Half of the Celestial Vault is the Time Garden system — daily, monthly, Dreamline, yearly. Notes by time.
The other half is what this page is about. It's a way of thinking about your notes that's almost the opposite of how most note apps work — and once it clicks, it's hard to go back.
The short version: let the notes organize themselves.
The Problem With Folders
Most note apps want you to file things. "Where does this go?" A book becomes /Books/. A person becomes /People/. A meeting becomes /Work/Meetings/.
But what about a note about a book a person recommended to you in a meeting?
You pick one folder. Lose access to the others. Or you copy the note three times. Or you give up and dump everything into a single /Notes/ folder and lose the ability to find anything.
Folders are a tax. Every time you create a note, you pay it.
The self-organizing approach says: don't pay it.
How It Works
1. Most notes live at the root of the vault.
Not inside folders. The root.
When you write a thought, an essay, a book reflection, a person profile — it goes in the same place as everything else you've written.
This sounds chaotic. It is — at first. But the chaos is a feature.
2. Each note has a categories: property — a list of wikilinks.
---
categories:
- "*Books*"
- "*Marketing*"
- "*Recommended by Sasha*"
---Categories are not tags. They are wikilinks to actual category pages that exist in your vault.
3. Each category page contains a base — a database view.
When you open *Books*, you don't just see "the page about books". You see a dynamic table of every note in your vault whose categories property contains *Books*.
The *Marketing* page shows every marketing note. The *Recommended by Sasha* page shows every recommendation Sasha ever gave you.
You add a category to your note → it appears in every relevant view automatically.
4. Notes link to each other freely — even to things that don't yet exist.
You write "Read about Stripe Atlas today" and the link is unresolved — there's no Stripe Atlas note yet. That's fine. The link sits there.
Later, when you do create that note, every previous mention lights up automatically as a backlink. The vault rewards future-you for following its own intuition.
Why This Beats Folders
Notes belong to many things at once.
A book recommended by Sasha that's about marketing is *Books* AND *Marketing* AND *Recommended by Sasha*. No "primary folder" decision. No copies. One note. Three categories. Three database views show it.
You stop pre-deciding.
The mental energy you spend thinking "where should this go?" disappears. You write. You categorize loosely. The system files everything.
The graph emerges.
Six months in, your vault has seen its own shape. You can open the graph view and watch it. You can click any category page and see every related note. You can follow a wikilink to a person and see every meeting, every book, every quote that touched them.
This isn't filing. It's a network.
Where This Comes From
This way of working with Obsidian was popularized by Steph Ango (Kepano), the CEO of Obsidian. He published his personal vault publicly — and it shaped how a lot of us think about notetaking now.
If you want a deep walkthrough of the philosophy, this video is worth the 17 minutes:
How the CEO of Obsidian Takes his Notes (Underrated Genius) — the original deep-dive on this approach.
The Celestial Vault is inspired by these file-over-app principles. It takes them and combines them with the Time Garden temporal system, plus a polished UX and aesthetic layer, into a single ready-to-use product.
The Six Habits That Make It Work
1. Write at the root.
When you have a thought, hit your "new unique note" shortcut and start writing. Don't pick a folder. There's only one place: the root.
2. Add categories at the top.
Open the note's properties (or just the frontmatter at the top) and add a categories: list. Use *wikilinks*. It can be one category, or five. There's no limit. Keep them broad — "Books" not "Books I read in November 2025".
3. Link liberally inside the body.
Every time you mention a person, a book, a company, a place — wrap it in *brackets*. Even if the note doesn't exist yet. Especially if it doesn't.
4. Don't agonize about category names.
If you're not sure whether to call it *Books* or *Books I've Read* — pick one and move on. You can rename later. The vault doesn't break.
5. Use the database views to navigate.
Don't browse folders. Open the category page (*Books*, *People*, *Movies*) and use the auto-generated table to find what you're looking for.
6. Use the Quick Switcher for everything else.
Cmd + O (Mac) or Ctrl + O (Windows). Type the name of any note. Hit Enter. You're there. This is how you navigate a self-organizing vault — you don't browse, you summon.
A Trap To Avoid
Don't try to "be organized" for the system's sake.
The temptation is to create category pages for every imaginable thing, link everything to everything, and turn your vault into a maintenance project. Don't.
The self-organizing vault works because you do less, not more. Create category pages only when you've started accumulating notes that need them. Link only what feels meaningful. Let the structure emerge from how you actually write — not from how you imagine you might.
The Two Halves Of The Celestial Vault — Together
The Time Garden side organizes your notes by time: today, this month, this Dreamline, this year.
The self-organizing side organizes everything else by meaning: this book, this person, this idea, this project.
A daily note can mention *A Book I'm Reading* and that book gets added to your *Books* view automatically. The book note can link back to the day it was first mentioned. Time and topic become a single web.
This is what Celestial is. Two halves of one vault.
Up Next
- Wikilink Categories — the practical how-to
- Bases & Database Views — the database tables under the hood
- The 36 Category Pages — the seed list that ships with Celestial