Mckay Wrigley - July 2025
Here is the video post on both X and YouTube.
I'm obsessed with Claude Code.
And it's because Claude Code is much more than just Claude Code.
It's Claude Agent.
Claude Code is really just a customizable agentic system. It's an AI agent that's good at knowing when and how to use tools. While it's disguised as a coding tool, its primitives allow you to build flexible workflows for any task - including taking notes.
I discovered this by accident. I'd been using Claude Code to write docs for my code - which it excels at - and one day I thought "Why not use Claude Code with my Obsidian vault? It's just text files. The workflow translates perfectly." So I did. And it quickly became obvious that this was a much better way to take notes.
For a product to stick, it needs to be natural. It needs to demand that you use it. A bad product insists upon itself - it feels forced. It's new for the sake of a being new, and unfortunately, many AI products are like this.
I've seen people say things like "I'm trying out XYZ new AI product and I have a sticky note on my monitor to remind me to use it!" My take? Bad product. If it was good, then you wouldn't need the reminder. The workflow would be such an obvious win that you'd naturally gravitate right back to it.
Claude Code is like this. You don't need a reminder to use it - its gravity is strong. Not using it immediately feels like going backwards.
When the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, they changed "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" to “We hold these truths to be self-evident”. A subtle change. But powerful. It means you don't need to sell me on the idea. The idea sells itself.
Great tools are self-evident. Once you use them, you can't go back - the improvements are immediate and obvious. This is why Claude Code has taken off so fast. It's a low-friction, high-impact tool that's infinitely malleable and delightful to use. It feels like what working in the future is supposed to feel like.
Taking notes is just one workflow that I've found Claude Code to be helpful for. While the following aims to be a practical, prescriptive guide, I hope that it serves as a broader invitation for you to find ways to build and use similar agentic workflows. We're in the midst of a major paradigm-shift, and it turns out that this new agentic paradigm is incredibly useful - so try it.
I think you'll find it to be self-evident.
Setup Instructions
Follow these instructions to set up Claude Code + Obsidian (if you're new to Claude Code, I have comprehensive lessons here, but these steps will get you started):
Download Obsidian. It's a free note-taking app with built-in knowledge base features that uses markdown files on your device. Once it's downloaded, you'll need to follow its instructions to create a new vault. A vault is just Obsidian's fundamental organizational unit - it's essentially a folder on your computer that contains all your notes and files for a particular knowledge base.
Install Claude Code and sign up for a Claude subscription. I recommend the Max plan for power users. It gives you much, much higher Claude Opus 4 usage limits. This is the tool + model combo that forms our note-taking agent.
Download Flow (optional). It's a speech-to-text tool that's 4x faster than typing.
Download Cursor (optional). You can use Cursor as your text-editor to get Tab for your notes.
Sign up for a free GitHub account and set up Claude Code's GitHub Action (optional). This gives you an easy way to run Claude Code on-the-go.
The workflows below assume you've completed at least steps 1 & 2.
10 Workflows To Try
Once you've completed steps 1 & 2, watch this video for the 10 workflows.
Learn How To Use Claude Code
Want to get up-to-speed on Claude Code, its toolbox, and core workflows? Check this out.