Second Brain Ingest Skill for Claude

Ingest a source

An ingest that only writes a summary page produces a vault that grows without

getting smarter. The whole value is in the second half of the job: connecting

the new material to what is already there. A page that lands unlinked is

invisible within a week.

Core rule

Nothing is ingested until it is linked. Every run ends with the new pages

connected to existing pages in both directions.

Workflow

• Read the source completely before writing anything. Partial reads

produce pages built from the introduction, which is where sources are least

specific.

• Check what already exists. Search the wiki for the main entities and

concepts. Ingesting into an empty vault and ingesting into a vault of 300

pages are different jobs: in the second, most of your work is updating

pages, not creating them.

• Write the source page in wiki/sources/. Record claims as claims, with

the source attached.

• Extract concepts and entities. One page per idea. If a concept page

exists, add what this source contributes and update updated:. If it

contradicts what is there, record both positions rather than replacing.

• Link in both directions. The source page links to every concept and

entity it touches; each of those links back. Add any missing target pages,

or list them under Gaps in index.md.

• Update index.md and append to log.md in the same run, because an

index that lags is how a vault starts drifting.

• Report what changed.

Output format

End every run with this exact shape:

Ingested: <source name>
New pages: <n> (list)
Updated pages: <n> (list)
Links added: <n>
Contradictions found: <none | description>
Gaps created: <list of linked pages that do not exist yet>

Calibration

Over-extraction is the common failure: ten thin concept pages from one article,

each a restated paragraph. A source usually yields one to three concepts worth

their own page. If a candidate concept cannot be explained without referring

back to this one source, it belongs inside the source page instead.

Under-extraction shows up as source pages that contain three separate ideas and

link to nothing. If a page needs section headings for unrelated topics, split

it.

Example

Input: the user drops raw/karpathy-llm-wiki.md, a clipped gist, into a vault

that already has pages for [[Obsidian]] and [[Claude Code]].

Output: one source page; a new concept page [[LLM wiki]] explaining the

pattern in plain language; an entity page [[Andrej Karpathy]]; updates to

[[Obsidian]] and [[Claude Code]] noting their role in the pattern; a link

from the existing [[Personal knowledge management]] concept to the new one;

index and log updated; report showing 3 new, 3 updated, 11 links.