An Obsidian vault skeleton for two people who share a business and a life. Six zones, a CLAUDE.md that turns Claude into a shared brain, and a self-hosted LiveSync setup that keeps your data on hardware you control.
Full writeup: My Cofounder Is My Girlfriend. We Share One Obsidian Vault.
shared-vault-template/
├── 00-inbox/ raw dump, split into mine/ and hers/
├── 01-business/ the company — strategy, clients, finance,
│ operations, content, product, meetings
├── 02-mine/ your stuff — startups, learning, personal
├── 03-hers/ their stuff — projects, learning, personal
├── 04-us/ shared-life — travel, home, health, events,
│ personal finance, goals
├── 05-resources/ tools, contacts, references, templates
├── docs/
│ ├── livesync-setup.md self-hosted CouchDB + Caddy guide
│ └── telegram-bot.md mobile capture pipeline (blueprint)
├── CLAUDE.md system prompt for the shared AI
├── .gitignore keeps dev artifacts out of your vault
└── LICENSE
# 1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/nikmcfly/shared-vault-template.git our-vault
cd our-vault
# 2. Drop the template's git history and start your own
rm -rf .git
git init
# 3. Open as an Obsidian vault
# Obsidian → File → Open folder as vault → select this directory
# 4. Edit CLAUDE.md
# Replace the placeholders with your business name and the two partners'
# tags (we use @a and @b — feel free to use names or initials).CLAUDE.md is the most important file in the repo. Every time you start a Claude session with this folder attached, the model reads it first. It tells Claude:
- Which zone each kind of note belongs to
- How to ask which partner is talking when it's ambiguous
- Four rules for drafting external correspondence (don't admit fault, one ask, name leverage, describe fallback)
- One anti-pattern: don't apologize for things that aren't your fault
.gitignore blocks dev artifacts (node_modules/, virtualenvs, build outputs, large binaries) from ever entering your vault. This is the lesson I learned the hard way — LiveSync syncs everything in the folder, not just markdown. If you run npm install in your vault by accident, you're in for a database wipe.
See docs/livesync-setup.md for a step-by-step guide that gets CouchDB running behind Caddy on a small VPS, with end-to-end encryption between devices.
See docs/telegram-bot.md for a blueprint of the mobile-capture bot that drops voice notes, photos, and links straight into 00-inbox/. Spec, not code — every team writes their own.
Especially:
- Better Android mobile-capture workflow
- Alternative sync backends (Syncthing, Git, Relay, etc.)
- More CLAUDE.md examples for different business types
- Translations of the README and CLAUDE.md template
MIT. Take it, fork it, make it yours.