Obsidian Power User Part 2: Building AI-Powered Workflows with Claude Code

It’s Monday morning. Your team meeting starts in 10 minutes. You need a quick status report: what shipped last week, what’s in progress, any blockers. You have a simple template, but manually filling it means opening your daily notes, scanning for completed tasks, copying project updates, and formatting everything. Ten minutes you don’t have.

What if typing /status-report in Claude Code does it in 2 minutes?

This is the transformation AI-powered workflows bring to Obsidian. Not replacing your templates, but eliminating the toil of filling them. The AI reads your recent notes comprehensively, identifies patterns, and generates professional reports that follow your template perfectly.

Simple scenario. Massive time savings. And this is just one workflow.

Building on the Foundation

In the Quick Start guide, we explored ad-hoc queries: “find my meeting notes from last Tuesday” or “what were my key technical learnings this month?” Those interactions are powerful for exploration and retrieval.

This article shows production automation for repetitive workflows. The kind of glue tasks you face regularly: status reports, research notes, meeting follow-ups. Tasks with consistent structure that take valuable time.

We’ll build AI skills using real examples, focusing on the intelligence that makes them valuable: aggregation, pattern recognition, and professional polish.

Your Obsidian Template Workflow

Before AI can help, you need structure. Templates are the foundation that makes intelligent automation possible.

The Status Report Template

Here’s a simple status report template:

# Weekly Status - {{date}}

## Project A
- **Completed:**
- **In Progress:**
- **Blockers:**

## Project B
- **Completed:**
- **In Progress:**
- **Blockers:**

## Key Learnings
- Technical insights from the week

## Next Week Focus
- Top priorities

Simple, clean, professional. The template works—but filling it manually is tedious.

The Manual Process

Here’s what happens every Monday morning:

1. Open last week’s daily notes (5 notes if you track Mon-Fri)
2. Scan for completed tasks marked with ✅
3. Find in-progress work marked with 🔄
4. Copy project updates to the template
5. Format everything consistently
6. Ten minutes later: Done, but your meeting already started

Why This is Worth Automating

• Happens regularly: Weekly or per-project
• Consistent structure: Same template every time
• Requires reading: Multiple notes, pattern recognition
• Time-sensitive: Often needed quickly

This is exactly the kind of work AI excels at eliminating.

Skills: Your Intelligent Copilot

Claude Code skills transform your templates from empty structures into intelligent automation.

What Are Claude Code Skills?

Skills are AI assistants that live in your ~/.claude/skills/ directory. Each skill is a markdown file (SKILL.md) with YAML frontmatter (name, description) and clear instructions for what the AI should do.

When you type /skill-name in Claude Code’s chat interface, the skill activates. The AI reads your instructions, accesses your Obsidian vault via MCP (Model Context Protocol), and executes the workflow you’ve defined.

How Skills Work

1. You: Type /status-report in Claude Code chat
2. Skill: Reads recent daily notes, extracts updates, populates template
3. You: Review generated content (2 minutes), make any edits
4. Done: 2 minutes total instead of 10

What Makes Skills Intelligent

Comprehensive reading: No skimming, no missing details. Every task, every note gets considered.

Pattern recognition: Identifies themes and connections across multiple notes that you’d miss while context-switching.

Context preservation: Maintains all your links and formatting—Jira tickets, task status indicators (✅ completed, 🔄 in-progress), technical details.

Professional polish: Formats output cleanly and consistently every time.

You’re not just saving time—you’re getting better output than manual work produces.

Status Report Skill: Complete Example

Let’s build a status report skill that eliminates 8 minutes of manual work every week.

The Skill Definition

Create ~/.claude/skills/status-report/SKILL.md:

---
name: status-report
description: Generate weekly status report from recent daily notes
---

Generate a weekly status report from recent daily notes.

## Instructions:

1. **Determine the time period:**
   - Default to the past 5 business days (Monday-Friday)
   - User can specify a different range

2. **Read daily notes:**
   - Identify daily notes for the period (format: `Daily Notes/YYYY-MM-DD.md`)
   - Read all notes using `mcp__obsidian__obsidian_batch_get_file_contents`

3. **Extract key information:**
   - Completed tasks (✅) grouped by project
   - In-progress work (🔄) grouped by project
   - Blockers or challenges mentioned
   - Key technical learnings or insights

4. **Generate the report:**
   - Follow the status report template structure
   - Group updates by project
   - Include completed items, in-progress work, and blockers for each
   - Add a "Key Learnings" section with technical insights
   - Add a "Next Week Focus" section with priorities mentioned

5. **Save the report:**
   - Save to `Reports/Status-YYYY-MM-DD.md`
   - Use `mcp__obsidian__obsidian_append_content`
   - Confirm the save location

## Best Practices:

- **Be concise:** Status reports are for quick updates, not comprehensive logs
- **Group by project:** Make it easy to scan by area
- **Preserve links:** Keep references to tickets, meeting notes, documentation
- **Highlight blockers:** Surface any issues that need visibility

## Example Usage:

/status-report /status-report for last week

Using the Skill

The invocation is simple:

You: /status-report

Claude: Generating status report for Jan 20-24, 2026...

        Reading 5 daily notes...
        Extracting project updates...
        Creating report...

        Created: Reports/Status-2026-01-24.md

        Summary:
        • Project A: 3 items completed, 2 in progress
        • Project B: 2 items completed, 1 blocker identified
        • 2 key technical learnings captured

Example Output

Here’s what the skill generates:

# Weekly Status - January 20-24, 2026

## Project A (API Platform)
- **Completed:**
  - ✅ Implemented authentication middleware
  - ✅ Added rate limiting to public endpoints
  - ✅ Resolved database connection pooling issue
- **In Progress:**
  - 🔄 API documentation updates
  - 🔄 Performance testing for new endpoints
- **Blockers:**
  - None

## Project B (Infrastructure)
- **Completed:**
  - ✅ Upgraded Kubernetes clusters to v1.28
  - ✅ Implemented automated backup verification
- **In Progress:**
  - 🔄 Migration to new monitoring system
- **Blockers:**
  - Waiting on vendor API access for monitoring integration

## Key Learnings
- **Connection pooling:** Max connections should be tuned based on actual
  database capacity, not application threads. Reduced pool from 100 to 20
  and eliminated timeout errors.
- **Rate limiting strategies:** Token bucket vs fixed window trade-offs.
  Token bucket provides smoother traffic handling for burst scenarios.

## Next Week Focus
- Complete API documentation
- Finish monitoring system migration
- Begin Q1 capacity planning

Notice:

• Clean, scannable structure
• Specific accomplishments with technical detail
• Blockers clearly identified
• Technical learnings with actionable insights
• Links and task status preserved

Research Skill: Building Knowledge Base

Status reports document what you did. Research skills document what you learned.

The Technology Research Skill

---
name: technology-research
description: Research technology and create structured technical documentation
---

Research specified technology and create structured technical documentation.

## Instructions:

1. **Identify technology** from user request
2. **Research:** Official docs, best practices, code examples
3. **Create structured note with:**
   - Overview and key concepts
   - Common patterns with code examples
   - Best practices
   - Troubleshooting tips
   - Resource links
4. **Save to** `Resources/Technical/[Technology].md`

## Quality Standards:

- Use authoritative sources (official docs first)
- Include working code examples
- Cover production considerations
- Provide specific troubleshooting guidance

Using the Research Skill

You: /research Kubernetes Ingress controllers

Claude: Researching official documentation...
        Analyzing patterns and best practices...
        Creating structured note...

        Created: Resources/Technical/Kubernetes-Ingress.md

        Covered: nginx-ingress vs Traefik comparison, TLS setup,
        path-based routing patterns, and common troubleshooting

This transforms scattered research into organized, reusable technical documentation.

Conclusion: From Manual Work to Intelligent Automation

You started with simple templates and 10 minutes of tedious manual work. Now you have intelligent skills that:

• Eliminate aggregation toil: Read all your notes comprehensively
• Find patterns you’d miss: Connect information across multiple days
• Generate professional documentation: Consistent formatting every time
• Save valuable time: 10 minutes → 2 minutes per report

More Than Time—Quality Gains

The real value isn’t just speed. Skills produce better output:

• Comprehensive coverage: No skimming, no missing details
• Pattern recognition: Identifies themes across multiple notes
• Preserved context: Maintains all your links and formatting
• Professional polish: Clean, scannable structure

Your Next Steps

1. Start simple: Create a skill for your most repetitive workflow (status reports, meeting follow-ups, research notes)
2. Test and refine: Start with read-only mode, verify quality, then enable saving
3. Build your library: Add skills as you identify more automation opportunities

The Paradigm Shift

Your Obsidian vault isn’t just storage—it’s an intelligent system:

• Templates provide structure
• Skills provide intelligence
• Together they eliminate toil

You’ve moved from manually aggregating notes to having AI do it for you. From spending 10 minutes on status reports to spending 2 minutes reviewing AI-generated output.

Make Obsidian your active productivity partner—one that handles tedious aggregation work while you focus on what matters.