Memory Alpha

Memory Alpha is a Zettelkasten-style Obsidian vault template for building LLM-maintained personal knowledge bases.

This repository is designed as a reusable starter kit that other people can clone and adapt for their own research, learning, and personal knowledge management workflows.

This PKM system was built heavily inspired by this talk:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSTy_BInQs8&t=173s

Who this is for

Memory Alpha is for people who want an LLM to help maintain a markdown knowledge base instead of leaving their work trapped in chat history. That includes:

• researchers
• engineers
• students
• writers
• anyone building a long-lived personal or project knowledge system in Obsidian

Branches

• main — the reusable operational starter kit you can fork and adapt
• showcase — a more filled-in branch that demonstrates how the system looks in use

What ships on main

• a numbered Obsidian vault structure
• templates for core note types
• public-safe .claude and .codex skills/scripts
• a tiny end-to-end AI/research example set

Vault layout

• 01 Rough Notes/ — fleeting notes and scratch captures
• 02 Source Material/ — one note per paper/article/book/video/social source
• 03 Tags/ — tag notes used as topic hubs
• 04 Indexes/ — maps of content and navigation notes
• 05 Templates/ — starter templates
• 06 Main Notes/ — evergreen, reusable concept notes
• _attachments/ — local assets referenced by notes

What this is not

• not a full dump of a private vault
• not a polished app or hosted product
• not a generic RAG framework
• not yet a cross-agent standard

Quick start

1. Open the folder in Obsidian.
2. Read MEMORY_ALPHA.md for the structure and philosophy.
3. Review 05 Templates/.
4. Inspect the tiny AI/research example notes.
5. Adapt folders, templates, and skills to your own domain.

Agent folders

• .claude/ and .codex/ are preserved as part of the starter kit.
• Cross-agent/generalized support (including Hermes-specific support) can be added later.