Morning Synthesis: a Start-of-Day Note Before Coffee

The Stack

Tested Against

Prerequisites

• Claude Code installed and logged in: `npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code`
• An Obsidian vault with Daily/ and Projects/ folders
• Back up your vault first (git ideal), the agent writes to it
• cron (built into macOS/Linux)

Steps

1. 1

   Check your toolchain

   The deterministic setup only needs bash, coreutils and cron. Claude Code is the agent for the final step, so we just warn if it's missing.

   for bin in bash date find; do
     command -v "$bin" >/dev/null 2>&1 || { echo "MISSING required: $bin"; exit 1; }
   done
   command -v claude >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "optional (needed for the synthesis step): claude"
   echo "preflight OK on $(uname -s)"

2. 2

   Scaffold the vault

   Create the Daily/ and Projects/ folders Claude reads, with a couple of sample notes to synthesize.

   mkdir -p vault/Daily vault/Projects
   printf '%s\n' '- [ ] Ship the importer (due 2026-06-02)' > vault/Projects/importer.md
   printf '%s\n' 'Left off mid-refactor.' > vault/Daily/2026-06-03.md
   find vault -type d | sort

3. 3

   Write the scheduled script

   This is the exact morning-synthesis.sh from the guide. We write it, make it executable, and confirm it carries the claude -p call.

   mkdir -p bin
   cat > bin/morning-synthesis.sh <<'EOF'
   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   cd ~/Documents/MyVault
   claude -p "Read my daily notes from the last 3 days in Daily/ and my active notes in Projects/. Create Daily/$(date +%F)-start-of-day.md with four sections: Where I left off, Due today, Overdue, and Suggested focus priority. Keep it short."
   EOF
   chmod +x bin/morning-synthesis.sh
   test -x bin/morning-synthesis.sh && grep -q 'claude -p' bin/morning-synthesis.sh && echo "script ready: bin/morning-synthesis.sh"

4. 4

   Check the dated path and the cron line

   Prove the output filename resolves to a real dated path, and that the 7am schedule is well-formed.

   echo "would write: Daily/$(date +%F)-start-of-day.md"
   echo "0 7 * * * /Users/you/bin/morning-synthesis.sh" | grep -Eq '^[0-9]+ [0-9]+ \* \* \* ' && echo "cron OK: daily at 07:00"

5. 5

   Let it run (the Claude step, not checked by CI)

   Schedule it with `crontab -e` (add `0 7 * * * ~/bin/morning-synthesis.sh`) and Claude Code writes your briefing each morning. This step needs your Claude login and produces judgement-based output, so CI doesn't run it, the badge covers the scaffold, script and schedule above.