5개 리서치 도구를 Obsidian + Claude 하나로 교체한 방법
For two years I ran five different tools to do one job: Notion, Readwise, X bookmarks, browser bookmarks, ChatGPT. Five tools. Five different places to look for the same piece of information. Five different mental models for what lived where.
“The system felt comprehensive until I needed something from it. Then it felt like five locked rooms with no master key.”
Why Five Tools Was Actually Zero Systems
The problem was never the tools. Each one did its job reasonably well in isolation. The problem was that they did not talk to each other in any way that was useful. A highlight in Readwise had no relationship to a project in Notion unless I manually created that relationship.
That is the tax nobody talks about when they recommend their research stack: the connection cost. Every time I needed to synthesise across tools I paid it in time and mental load. Multiplied across hundreds of research sessions over two years, that cost was enormous.
The shift I made was architectural, not cosmetic. Instead of asking which tools were best at their individual jobs, I asked which system would make connections automatically.
The 6-Folder Vault Structure
Everything lives in one Obsidian vault. One place. One search. One context window when Claude needs to reason across it.
00-Inbox/ — everything lands here first. No organisation at capture time.
01-Sources/ — processed articles, papers, reports, transcripts. One note per source.
02-Ideas/ — atomic observations, reactions, patterns. One idea per note.
03-Projects/— active research threads. Each one links to relevant sources and ideas.
04-Outputs/ — finished articles, threads, reports.
05-Claude/ — CLAUDE.md file, skill files, session logs.
Rule: everything goes into Inbox first and gets processed later. If saving something takes more than ten seconds, it will not get saved.
How Each Tool Was Replaced
Notion → 03-Projects/ — Projects folder in plain text, which Claude can read and reason across simultaneously. No database views creating the illusion of organisation.
Readwise → Obsidian Inbox + Readwise Official Plugin — plugin pushes every highlight directly into Inbox as a note within minutes. Highlights are now in the same environment as ideas and projects. Claude’s weekly synthesis reads them alongside project notes and finds connections automatically.
X Bookmarks → Telegram bot to Obsidian Inbox — forward tweet + one-line note on why it matters → lands in Inbox within 30 seconds. 800+ graveyard tweets → zero. Everything that used to die in X bookmarks either gets processed into the vault or does not get saved at all.
Browser Bookmarks → Same Telegram bot — any link from any browser on any device. A browser bookmark sits in a folder and waits to be remembered. An Obsidian Inbox note gets reviewed by Claude every Sunday.
ChatGPT → Claude Projects with vault context — loaded CLAUDE.md + active project notes + best source notes as project knowledge. Claude now answers from months of accumulated thinking, not training data alone. First week: Claude surfaced 3 connections between notes I had written 6 weeks apart that I had completely forgotten were related.
Weekly Synthesis Prompt
Every Sunday, Claude runs automatically:
Read all notes added to my Obsidian vault in the last 7 days across every folder.
Produce a weekly synthesis with four sections:
1. Connections: Two or three non-obvious links between things I captured separately this week.
2. Patterns: Any theme or argument that appears across three or more separate notes.
3. Gaps: What I have not captured this week that my existing projects suggest I should be tracking.
4. Next: The one question worth pursuing that my capture this week most clearly points to.
Output on a good week is better than anything produced from 45 minutes of manual review.
Source Template (Processed to 01-Sources/)
Process this content:
Title: [original title]
Source: [publication or author]
Date: [date]
Type: [article / paper / transcript / report]
Core argument: [one sentence — what is the central claim?]
Key points: [three to five bullet points]
My reaction: [leave blank — I will fill in]
Connections: [what does this connect to in my existing vault?]
The connections field scans the existing vault every time a new source enters. Manual connection work now happens automatically.
The Single Point of Failure
“The Telegram bot is the single most important piece of infrastructure in the system because it removes every possible excuse for not capturing something.”
If capture breaks down, the whole thing degrades within two weeks. The vault gets stale. The synthesis has nothing to surface. The connections stop appearing.
One Weekend Build
- Saturday AM: Obsidian + 6-folder structure + Readwise plugin + Telegram bot (Zapier/Make)
- Saturday PM: Write CLAUDE.md (highest-leverage hour in entire build)
- Saturday evening: Seed 5 most important existing sources using template
- Sunday: Set up Claude Project. Run weekly synthesis manually.
- Week 1: Capture everything, process daily, run synthesis Sunday
- Week 2: Automate Sunday synthesis via N8N/Zapier