obsidian-vault-template

A GitHub template repository for a multi-topic Obsidian vault of public study notes on reverse engineering, coding, programming languages, and adjacent CS topics — one self-contained topic folder per subject, all sharing the same structure and tooling.

Each topic mirrors the shape of reversing-dalvik-bytecode: topic-centric chapters, self-updating Dataview indices, Templater scaffolding for every note type, and a small set of standalone note types (cheatsheets, tool notes, reading notes, project logs) for things that don't belong to one chapter. Topics are top-level folders at the repository root — so the vault can hold as many as you're studying, side by side.

📓 Using this template

1. On GitHub, click Use this template → Create a new repository (if this repo isn't already marked as a template, enable it once under Settings → General → Template repository).
2. Clone the new repository and open its root folder in Obsidian.
3. Add your first topic with the New-Topic Templater template (see [[New-Topic]] / Templates/New-Topic.md) — it creates the topic's home note and walks you through copying the rest of the structure from _Topic-Skeleton/.
4. Add chapters within that topic with New-Chapter (see [[New-Chapter]]) — everything else grows from there.
5. Install the recommended community plugins (Templater, Dataview, Spaced Repetition) — see Home.md for why each one matters.

Tip

This vault is meant to be read and edited in Obsidian, not on GitHub. The notes rely on Obsidian-only features — [[wikilink]] navigation and the graph/backlinks view, Dataview queries, Templater templates, foldable callouts — that GitHub's markdown renderer simply doesn't have; on GitHub they degrade to plain text or empty code blocks. Open the folder with Obsidian (free, available on desktop, iOS, and Android) and start from Home.md for the full, properly-rendered index.

📚 What's included

Path	Content
<TopicName>/ (one per topic)	everything for that subject, at the repository root
_Topic-Skeleton/	copy-source for a new topic's Reference/Case-Studies/Cheatsheets/Tools/Reading-Notes/Projects folders, including a fictional demo-project-case-study/ showing the expected case-study shape
Templates/	every Templater template, used vault-wide across all topics
assets/	non-note files (scans, screenshots, exported diagrams), not topic-specific

Topic folders sit directly at the root alongside these three — don't use Templates, _Topic-Skeleton, or assets as a topic name. Each topic follows this internal shape:

<TopicName>/
├── <TopicName>.md      <- topic home/MOC
├── 01-ChapterName/       <- numbered concept chapters, added as you go
│   ├── ChapterName.md
│   ├── examples/
│   └── snippets/
├── 0N-Reference/          <- always the highest-numbered chapter
├── Case-Studies/
├── Cheatsheets/
├── Tools/
├── Reading-Notes/
└── Projects/

See CLAUDE.md for the complete structuring convention — including the vault-wide filename-uniqueness rule Obsidian's bare [[wikilinks]] depend on — read it before adding a new topic, chapter, note type, or top-level folder.

Structure and extensibility

• Notes are cross-linked with Obsidian's [[wikilink]] syntax, which powers the graph view and backlinks panel (see the tip above about reading this in Obsidian).
• Diagrams use Mermaid, rendered natively by both Obsidian and GitHub.
• New notes of any kind should be created from the files in Templates/, via the Templater community plugin (recommended) or the core "Templates" plugin.
• Every topic's Reference, Case-Studies, Cheatsheets, Tools, Reading-Notes, and Projects index notes include Dataview queries that automatically list every matching note in that topic as it's added.

License

MIT — do whatever you like with the skeleton; the content you fill it with is yours.