---
title: "10. MOC Maintainer"
description: "Weekly rebuild of folder index notes."
source: "Obsidian Academy"
source_url: https://obsidian-academy.pages.dev/workflows/10-moc-maintainer/
saved: 2026-05-16
tags: [obsidian-academy, saved-from-web, workflows]
---

**TL;DR** — Once a week, Claude rebuilds index notes (Maps of Content) for each top-level vault folder — `00-Inbox.md`, `20-Projects.md`, `60-People.md`, etc. Each MOC lists children, recent activity, and orphan notes that need linking. Your vault stays navigable as it scales.

> [!NOTE]
> **Skill status: coming soon.** The `rebuild-mocs` skill isn't built yet — this page is the design sketch.

## When to use it

- Weekly, as part of your Sunday ritual (right after weekly-review)
- After importing a big chunk of notes (e.g., post-conference dump)
- When the graph view starts to look like spaghetti
- When you can't remember whether you have a note on X

> **Try it now:** `"rebuild my MOCs"`
>
> Variants planned: *"refresh the index notes"*, *"update maps of content"*.

What each MOC looks like:

```md
# 20-Projects MOC

> Last rebuilt: 2026-05-15

## Active projects (12)
- [[whittech-redesign]] — updated 2 days ago
- [[obsidian-academy]] — created today
- [[sales-workspace]] — updated 5 days ago
- ...

## Recently completed
- [[seven-oh-tracker]] — archived 2026-05-10

## Orphan notes (no incoming links)
- [[project-XYZ]] — created 30 days ago, never linked. Archive or link?

## Stale (no edits in 30+ days)
- [[old-project-A]]
- [[old-project-B]]
```

## Under the hood (design)

- **Skill location (planned):** `~/.claude/skills/rebuild-mocs/SKILL.md`
- **Reads:** every top-level folder via `obsidian_list_files_in_dir`; recent changes via `obsidian_get_recent_changes`; backlink data (via Dataview if available, fallback to text search)
- **Writes:** one MOC per top-level folder — `00-Inbox.md`, `10-Daily.md`, `20-Projects.md`, ..., `90-Templates.md`
- **Doesn't touch:** the contents of the folders themselves, only the index notes at root

## Watch out for (anticipated)

- **First run** will create the MOCs from scratch. Subsequent runs overwrite them — make sure you don't manually edit MOCs without them being regenerated.
- **Orphan signal** — sometimes orphan notes are intentional (e.g., a one-off draft you'll publish soon). The skill flags them; don't auto-delete.
- **Dataview dependency** — for richer queries (e.g., "all projects with status: active"), Dataview plugin needed. The skill should degrade gracefully without it.

## Make it yours (planned customizations)

- **MOC styles** — visual MOCs (Obsidian Canvas), textual (Dataview tables), simple (bulleted list). Pick per folder.
- **Stale thresholds** — for `60-People/`, "stale" might be 6 months (some friendships are quiet); for `20-Projects/`, 30 days is reasonable.
- **Auto-archive** — if a project hasn't been touched in 90+ days AND is marked `status: complete`, auto-move to `50-Archive/`.

## Related workflows

- **[Weekly Review](https://obsidian-academy.pages.dev/workflows/06-weekly-review/)** — Run weekly-review first, then this. Patterns appear.
- **[Research Synthesizer](https://obsidian-academy.pages.dev/workflows/07-research-synthesizer/)** — MOCs are static; synthesis is generative. Both have a place.