On Claire Vo’s How I AI, math educator Scott Farrar demonstrates a household knowledge folder: plain markdown files that Claude Code can read and update, with Obsidian as a view into those records.
Put household facts where a new chat can find them
- Farrar records appliance photos and serial numbers, warranties, insurance quotes and open repair projects in inspectable files.
- A fresh session can answer a refrigerator question from the saved warranty record or find the next step in an insurance comparison.
- He compares it to his father’s filing cabinet: the difference is conversational retrieval and an editable checklist, not a newly invented source of truth.
- A linter keeps the agent from expanding a short to-do list into unwieldy updates. The files remain readable so mistakes can be corrected.
Make the system usable by other people
- Scott and his wife share most notes through Dropbox. He accepts occasional sync-conflict risk rather than requiring her to manage a Git workflow.
- A small script turns selected tasks, trips and completed wins into a wall display. It surfaces the next action without opening the full vault.
- A vague earthquake-preparedness question becomes an idea, then a project only after he decides to pursue it. Claire proposes a home video walkthrough as a future experiment; it is not tested in this episode.
Leave the thinking with the person
- Scott wants a math tutor to ask children to explain a step, such as why they subtract from both sides, rather than hand them an answer.
- Caveat: insurance adequacy, repair urgency and location-specific risks are not independently checked. Sharing a vault with an AI provider and a household display requires deliberate privacy boundaries.
“I wanted to build a system where I was confident that AI was grounded in my truth.” — Scott Farrar, 3:48