Ludolph

A real brain for your second brain.

Talk to your vault, from anywhere, anytime.

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Ludolph is a self-hosted Telegram bot that gives Claude read-only access to your Obsidian vault. It runs on a Raspberry Pi (or any always-on machine), letting you ask questions about your notes from anywhere.

Features

• Sandboxed access — Claude can only read files inside your vault directory
• Always available — Runs on your Pi, answers via Telegram
• Single binary — No Python, no dependencies, just download and run
• Your API key — You control costs and data

Quick Start

curl -sSL https://ludolph.dev/install | bash

The installer will:

1. Download the lu binary
2. Create ~/ludolph/ directory structure
3. Prompt for your Telegram bot token and Claude API key
4. Set up the systemd service

Then sync your Obsidian vault to ~/ludolph/vault/ however you prefer (rsync, Syncthing, git, etc.).

Usage

Once running, message your Telegram bot:

• "What's in my daily note?"
• "Find all notes mentioning 'project alpha'"
• "Summarize my meeting notes from last week"

CLI Commands

lu status      # Check if Ludolph is running
lu logs        # View recent logs
lu restart     # Restart the service
lu update      # Update to latest version
lu uninstall   # Remove Ludolph

Configuration

Config lives at ~/ludolph/config.toml:

[telegram]
bot_token = "your-telegram-bot-token"

[claude]
api_key = "your-anthropic-api-key"
model = "claude-sonnet-4-20250514"

[vault]
path = "~/ludolph/vault"

Building from Source

git clone https://github.com/evannagle/ludolph
cd ludolph
cargo build --release

Cross-compile for Raspberry Pi:

cargo build --release --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu

Named After

Ludolph van Ceulen (1540–1610), the mathematician who spent 25 years calculating pi to 35 decimal places. He had the digits engraved on his tombstone.

License

MIT