Vault config
Location
Company brain lives at ${COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT:-$HOME/Documents/CompanyBrain}/.
Override in ~/.zshenv:
export COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT="$HOME/code/acme-company-brain" # per-team pathFor multi-team users (e.g., a consultant maintaining vaults for multiple clients):
export COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT="$HOME/code/current-client-brain"
# Switch by aliasing:
alias cb-acme="export COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT=$HOME/code/acme-brain"
alias cb-beta="export COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT=$HOME/code/beta-brain"The skill respects whatever $COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT points to at invocation time.
Storage backends
Company brains live in one of three places, in order of team-scale readiness:
| Backend | When to use | Trade-offs |
|---|---|---|
| Obsidian vault (local, git-synced) | 1-10 person teams | Simplest, portable, git handles history + attribution. Requires everyone to install Obsidian. |
| Shared git repo (no Obsidian) | 5-50 person teams, engineering-heavy | Everyone reads markdown in their editor of choice. Git is the sync layer. Requires markdown literacy. |
| Notion / Coda backed by markdown export | 20+ person teams, non-technical majority | Team edits in Notion; nightly export → git-backed markdown for company-brain. Extra sync layer, but non-engineers can contribute. |
Company-brain skill treats all three the same — reads/writes markdown. The backend choice is a team decision, not a skill decision.
Initial setup for a new team
# 1. Pick a path
export COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT="$HOME/code/mycompany-brain"
# 2. Create the vault
mkdir -p "$COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT"
cd "$COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT"
# 3. Init git (if not already)
git init
git remote add origin git@github.com:mycompany/company-brain.git
# 4. Create structured raw dirs
mkdir -p people companies meetings sops decisions customer-language recurring-questions sales-objections raw wiki outputs Projects Team Templates Drafts
# 5. Seed CLAUDE.md (copy from ~/code/makerskills/skills/company-brain/references/schema.md as starting point)
cp ~/code/makerskills/skills/company-brain/references/schema.md CLAUDE.md
# 6. Seed INDEX.md
echo "# Wiki Index\n\n## Sales\n\n## Customers\n\n## Ops\n\n## Product\n\n## Team & People\n\n## Decisions\n\n## Playbooks" > wiki/INDEX.md
# 7. Seed .gitignore
cat > .gitignore <<EOF
.DS_Store
.obsidian/workspace*
.obsidian/cache
.trash/
Drafts/*.private.md
EOF
# 8. First commit
git add . && git commit -m "Seed company brain schema"
git push -u origin mainSensitivity access lists (optional)
If using sensitivity tagging, maintain two access lists in Team/:
Team/leadership.md # emails/handles that can read `leadership` content
Team/confidential-access.md # per-topic access lists for confidential wiki pagesCompany-brain skill reads these when respecting sensitivity in query mode.
Backup
Same as any git repo. Push to a hosted remote (GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket). Recover by cloning.
For sensitive content in the vault, treat it like any git repo with secrets — encrypted at rest via git-crypt if the remote isn't fully trusted.