---
title: "1. Daily Driver"
description: "Morning daily-note builder — the spine of the whole system."
source: "Obsidian Academy"
source_url: https://obsidian-academy.pages.dev/workflows/01-daily-driver/
saved: 2026-05-16
tags: [obsidian-academy, saved-from-web, workflows]
---

**TL;DR** — Say "good morning" to Claude Code and it builds today's daily note in `10-Daily/` with yesterday's carry-over tasks, your top 3 priorities, and a snapshot of what's waiting in your inbox. Used every weekday morning. Takes ~10 seconds.

This is the workflow you'll use most. Get this one right and the rest of the system has a spine.

## When to use it

- First thing in the morning, before email
- After a multi-day gap (weekend, travel) — it'll consolidate carry-overs
- When you want a clean starting page for the day without manual setup

> **Try it now:** `"good morning"`
>
> Open Claude Code in your `WhittechAI` vault and type that phrase. The skill triggers on variants too: *"start my day"*, *"build today's note"*, *"daily driver"*.

The skill will:

1. Read yesterday's note from `10-Daily/`
2. Pull anything from `00-Inbox/` that hasn't been triaged
3. Scan recent changes in `20-Projects/` for momentum signals
4. Write today's note to `10-Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md`

A new note appears in your file tree. Open it. That's your dashboard for the day.

## Under the hood

- **Skill location:** `~/.claude/skills/daily-driver/SKILL.md`
- **Reads:**
  - `10-Daily/[yesterday].md` — for carry-over tasks and tomorrow's #1
  - `00-Inbox/inbox.md` + `00-Inbox/*` — for surfaced inbox items
  - `obsidian_get_recent_changes` — last 2 days, top 10 files
- **Writes:** one file — `10-Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md`
- **Template source:** `90-Templates/daily.md`
- **Doesn't chain** other skills, but its output is read by [Weekly Review](/workflows/06-weekly-review/) on Sundays.

## Watch out for

- **First run after a weekend** can be noisy — it'll surface 3+ days of carry-over. That's correct behavior, not a bug.
- **On mobile**, Claude Code runs on your desktop. Trigger it before you leave home, and Syncthing pushes the note to your Galaxy S26+ within ~30 seconds.
- **Missing yesterday note:** if you skipped a day, it'll look back up to 7 days. Beyond that, you get a blank slate — by design.
- **`obsidian_get_recent_changes` errors** mean Dataview isn't installed in Obsidian. Install it from Community Plugins to fix.

## Make it yours

- **Change the wake phrase:** edit the `description:` line in the skill's frontmatter to add a phrase like "punch in" or "let's go".
- **Change the note layout:** edit `90-Templates/daily.md`. Every future daily note picks up your changes — Workout, Reading, Meditation sections, whatever you want.
- **Stack it:** run "good morning" then immediately "process my inbox" — your day is now planned + zeroed in 60 seconds.

## Related workflows

- **[Inbox Zero](https://obsidian-academy.pages.dev/workflows/02-inbox-zero/)** — Natural next step after your morning note exists
- **[Weekly Review](https://obsidian-academy.pages.dev/workflows/06-weekly-review/)** — Consumes a week of these daily notes every Sunday