# Obsidian Cleanup Audit — 2026-05-19

Vault: `/home/will/lab/swarm/swarm-common/obsidian-vault/will/will-shared-zap`

## Executive summary

The vault is small and mostly healthy: **136 Markdown notes**. The main cleanup problem is not deep rot; it is automation/test smoke left behind and a few placeholder/stub notes.

Highest-confidence cleanup candidates: **18 notes** are empty, `{}` stubs, disposable test notes, or obvious example/smoke artifacts.

Second priority: link hygiene. I found **48 unresolved wikilinks/relative links** after resolving normal Obsidian basename and path links. Many are template placeholders and harmless, but some indicate missing index/person/area notes or stale architecture references.

## Folder distribution

| Folder | Notes |
|---|---:|
| Notes | 24 |
| Templates | 19 |
| Atlas | 16 |
| Projects | 13 |
| Infrastructure | 12 |
| Inbox | 8 |
| Daily | 7 |
| Voice Memos | 6 |
| root | 5 |
| Resources | 5 |
| Diary | 5 |
| Runbooks | 4 |
| Hermes Disposable Tests | 4 |
| Decisions | 2 |
| Plans / Clippings / Areas / People / Meetings / Archive | 1 each |

## Safe delete candidates

These look safe to remove or archive as test debris. I did **not** delete them.

### Empty notes

- `2026-04-16.md`
- `Systems.md`
- `Voice Memos/2026-05-13-e2e-test-full-pipeline.md`
- `Voice Memos/2026-05-13-e2e-test-fixed-auth.md`
- `Voice Memos/2026-05-13-e2e-test-retry-auth.md`
- `Voice Memos/2026-05-13-e2e-auth-fixed.md`
- `Voice Memos/2026-05-13-final-e2e-test.md`

### `{}` stub notes

- `Notes/2026-05-13 Evening Digest.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-14 Evening Digest.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-15 Evening Digest.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-17 Evening Digest.md`

These four are also duplicate content.

### Disposable/smoke artifacts

- `Clippings/2026-05-13-example-domain.md`
- `Hermes Disposable Tests/append-note-created-by-append-20260515-101031.md`
- `Hermes Disposable Tests/append-note-fixed-20260515-101031.md`
- `Hermes Disposable Tests/append-note-semantics-20260515-100757.md`
- `Hermes Disposable Tests/raw-append-op-20260515-100823.md`
- `Voice Memos/2026-05-13-final-pipeline-test.md`

### Needs review before delete

- `Templates/Atlas Artifacts/test-report.md` — flagged because it has “test” in the title/content, but it may be an intentional reusable template. Keep unless the Atlas artifact-template set is being simplified.

## Notes that “don’t make sense” structurally

### Automation digest clutter

There are many one-off nightly vault sync notes under `Notes/`:

- `Notes/2026-03-27 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-03-31 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-04-17 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-04-19 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-04-21 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-04-22 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-04-23 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-04-28 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-04-29 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-01 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-03 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-04 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-08 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-10 Nightly Vault Sync.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-11 Nightly Vault Sync.md`

Recommendation: keep `Infrastructure/Automation/n8n Nightly Vault Sync.md` as the canonical runbook/status note, then either archive the daily sync notes under `Archive/Automation Logs/` or summarize them into one changelog and delete the raw day-by-day noise.

### Root-level notes

Root contains:

- `Conventions.md`
- `2026-04-16.md` — empty; delete
- `Weekend Activity Ideas.md`
- `Ops Home.md`
- `Systems.md` — empty; delete or replace with a real systems index

Recommendation: root should probably contain only `Ops Home.md`, `Conventions.md`, and maybe a few true entrypoints. Move `Weekend Activity Ideas.md` into `Resources/` or `Areas/Home/` if keeping it.

## Link hygiene findings

Unresolved links after normal Obsidian resolution: **48**.

Likely harmless/template placeholders:

- `{{project}}` — 7 instances in `Templates/Atlas Artifacts/*`
- `artifact-name` — 1 instance
- `Note A`, `Note B`, `wikilinks`, `url` in `Conventions.md` examples

Likely real missing or stale notes:

- `Infrastructure/Automation/n8n Morning Brief`
- `Infrastructure/Automation/n8n Evening Digest`
- `Atlas/Safer Autonomy and Permission Tiers`
- `Atlas/Gateway Approval Runbook`
- `Atlas/Skill Inventory`
- `Atlas/Skill Backlog`
- `Vault Conventions` — appears to mean `Conventions.md`
- `Areas/Health and Medical Leave`, `Areas/Legal` — notes exist under `Atlas/Personal Context/Areas/...`, not root `Areas/...`
- `People/Roxanne`, `People/Liam`, `People/Mila`, `People/Family in France` — notes exist under `Atlas/Personal Context/People/...`, not root `People/...`
- `Diary/Entries`, `Diary/Weekly Reviews`, `Diary/Atlas Reflections` — folder-style links; create index notes or change to plain text/folder references
- `Inbox/Inbox Home` — missing, but likely intended

Recommendation: fix links by either creating small index notes or retargeting links to existing paths. Do this after deleting test debris so the graph is cleaner.

## Orphan candidates

These have no incoming or outgoing links by the scan. Some are intentionally standalone daily/research artifacts; others are clutter.

Most suspicious orphans:

- `2026-04-16.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-13 Evening Digest.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-14 Evening Digest.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-15 Evening Digest.md`
- `Notes/2026-05-17 Evening Digest.md`
- `Clippings/2026-05-13-example-domain.md`
- `Voice Memos/2026-05-13-*test*.md`
- `Hermes Disposable Tests/*.md`
- `Inbox/Chat Summaries/2026-05-14 - Atlas Event-Driven Automation Smoke.md`

Probably okay but should be linked from an index:

- `Weekend Activity Ideas.md`
- `Projects/Atlas/Skill Inventory.md`
- `Projects/Atlas/Skill Backlog.md`
- `Decisions/Runbook Suggestions.md`
- `Atlas/Daily Research/2026-05-18 - Hermes AI Brief.md`
- `Atlas/Daily Research/2026-05-19 - Hermes AI Brief.md`
- `Atlas/Personal Context/People/*.md`

## Recommended cleanup order

1. Delete or archive the 17 obvious disposable/empty/stub notes. Keep `Templates/Atlas Artifacts/test-report.md` unless you want to simplify templates.
2. Decide what to do with nightly sync notes: archive them as automation logs or compress to a single changelog.
3. Fix `Vault Conventions` links to `Conventions`.
4. Retarget personal-context links from root `People/...` and `Areas/...` to `Atlas/Personal Context/People/...` and `Atlas/Personal Context/Areas/...`, or create redirect/index notes in root `People/` and `Areas/`.
5. Create missing index notes if desired: `Inbox/Inbox Home.md`, `Diary/Entries.md`, `Diary/Weekly Reviews.md`, `Diary/Atlas Reflections.md`.
6. Decide whether root `Systems.md` should become a real `Infrastructure/Systems.md`-style index; otherwise delete it.

## Suggested cleanup policy going forward

- Smoke tests should write to `Hermes Disposable Tests/` and a cleanup job should purge files older than 7 days.
- Automation status should update canonical notes/runbooks, not create a new note per day unless the daily artifact is meant to be human-read.
- Generated notes should be linked from a home/index note immediately, or tagged `#generated/unlinked` for later triage.
- Empty notes and `{}` notes should be treated as failed pipeline output and alerted/deleted.
