DOCS · THE VAULT & GRAPH
A company brain you own.
SynthOS is the AI operating system for a company of one, and the vault is where its work accumulates. It’s not a database we keep — it’s a folder of plain Obsidian-compatible markdown files on your Mac that everything agents do files into. As those notes reference each other they auto-link into a living graph you can watch grow: a company brain that compounds instead of resetting every session. This page is the reference for what the vault is, how it’s organized, and why it stays yours.
01 · WHAT IT IS
Markdown files on your disk.
A vault is a folder you choose on your Mac. Inside it are ordinary .md files — the same plain-text markdown format Obsidian uses. Everything SynthOS produces is written there as a file you can open in any editor, with or without the app running.
There is no proprietary store and no lock-in format. A note is a text file. A project is a folder. A link between two notes is a line of markdown. When an agent researches a topic, drafts a document, or records what it just did, the output lands in the vault as a regular file on disk — not a row in a cloud database you can’t reach. If you opened the folder in Finder right now, you’d see exactly what the app sees.
An illustrative layout, not a screenshot. Your real folder and file names are whatever you and your agents create — these are just plain files and folders on disk.
For the skeptical: a vault is a directory of UTF-8 text files. You can grep it, diff it, version it in git, or read it on a machine that has never heard of SynthOS. The format is the contract.
02 · THE LIVING GRAPH
Notes that compound.
Markdown notes can reference each other with wiki-style links. As your vault fills in, those links form a graph — a map of how your work connects. SynthOS reads and writes that graph so each new piece of work can stand on what came before instead of starting cold.
A link is just text. When one note mentions another, it’s written as a double-bracketed reference — the same convention Obsidian uses — and both notes now know about each other. Nothing is indexed in a hidden service; the links live in the files themselves.
Open the graph view and you see notes as nodes and links as edges. Run more work and you can watch it grow: clusters form around projects, hubs emerge around the ideas you return to, and stray notes get pulled into the web as agents connect them. The structure isn’t something you maintain — it accrues from the work.
A sketch of the shape, not a live capture: notes as nodes, wiki-links as edges, larger nodes where many notes converge. Your real graph is whatever your work builds.
This is the whole difference between a chat that forgets and an operating system that remembers — the graph is the memory, and it gets denser every time you run.
03 · OPEN IN OBSIDIAN
It’s just markdown you own.
Because the vault is a plain markdown folder, Obsidian can open it directly. SynthOS doesn’t require Obsidian — it works on its own — but if you already live in Obsidian, the same files are yours to browse, edit, and graph there too.
POINT OBSIDIAN AT THE FOLDER
Open as an existing vault
In Obsidian, choose Open folder as vault and select the same folder SynthOS writes to. Obsidian indexes the markdown in place — it doesn’t copy or convert anything. You’re looking at the exact files.
THE LINKS ALREADY WORK
Wiki-links and graph view
The [[note]] links agents write are Obsidian’s native link format, so backlinks, the local graph, and the global graph view light up with no extra setup. The brain SynthOS builds is the brain Obsidian shows.
EDIT FROM EITHER SIDE
One folder, two windows
Edits you make in Obsidian are edits to the same files SynthOS reads next time it runs, and the notes agents add show up in Obsidian. Save in one, refresh in the other — there’s no sync layer between them because there’s only one copy of the files.
Obsidian is optional, not a dependency. Any markdown editor — or no editor at all — reads a vault the same way. We use Obsidian’s conventions because they’re plain text, not because they tie you to a particular app.
04 · ORGANIZATION
Projects, notes, and what agents file.
Work lands in the vault in a predictable shape. Agents group related output, write notes as they go, and link new work back to what it touched — so the folder stays legible as it grows.
A project is a folder that holds the work for one effort — a launch, a research thread, a piece of writing. Related notes, drafts, and outputs collect under it, so a body of work is one place on disk rather than scattered files.
A note is a single markdown file — a summary, a plan, a draft, a fact worth keeping. Notes are the unit the graph is made of: small, named, readable, and reusable across projects.
A link is a [[wiki-style]] reference from one note to another. Agents add links as they connect ideas, which is what turns a pile of files into a graph you can navigate.
As agents work, they file what they did — notes recording the steps, the result, and the files touched. These receipts mean the vault records not just outputs but how the work got there, and they read back as ordinary markdown like everything else.
You don’t have to file anything by hand. The structure emerges from the work — and because it’s all plain folders and files, you can rearrange it any way you like.
05 · SEEDING
Bring in what you already know.
The vault starts empty, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Because it’s just a markdown folder, anything you already have in markdown can become part of the brain on day one.
Drop in existing notes. Copy your own markdown files — meeting notes, specs, brand guidelines, research — into the vault folder. They’re instantly part of it, and agents can read, reference, and build on them like any other note.
Bring an existing Obsidian vault. If you already keep a vault, you can point SynthOS at it. The conventions are the same, so your existing links and structure carry over — SynthOS adds to the brain you’ve already built rather than starting a separate one.
Let it grow from use. The simplest way to seed the brain is to use it. Ask for real work, and the notes, summaries, and links accumulate on their own — each run leaving the vault a little denser than it found it.
Seeding is a file copy, not an import wizard. Anything in markdown is already in the format the vault speaks — there’s no migration to run and nothing to convert.
06 · IT’S YOURS
Local-first, and portable.
The vault is real files in your filesystem, on a machine you control. That’s not a marketing line — it’s the reason canceling never holds your work hostage.
It lives on your Mac. The vault is stored in a folder you chose on your own disk, not on our servers. SynthOS reads and writes it locally; we’re not a middleman holding your files.
It outlives the subscription. If you stop paying or delete the app, the files stay exactly where they are. There is no vault to “export” from us, because it was never ours to begin with — it’s already on your disk in a format anything can read.
It’s readable without us. Open it in Obsidian, a text editor, or the command line. The brain you built stays legible and useful whether or not SynthOS is installed — that’s the whole point of plain markdown.
You can take it further. When a vault is worth more than your own use of it, the Forge can turn it into a product others can call — but that’s your choice, on your files. The vault is yours first.
Owning the files is the difference between renting your memory and keeping it. Canceling ends the subscription, not your work.
07 · BACKUPS & MOVING
Back it up. Move it anywhere.
A vault is a folder, so every tool you already use for folders works on it — and moving to a new Mac is moving a directory, nothing more.
BACK IT UP LIKE ANY FOLDER
Time Machine, cloud sync, git
Time Machine, a cloud-synced folder, or a git repository all back up a vault the same way they back up any directory. Because it’s plain text, git in particular gives you a readable history of how the brain changed over time.
MOVE IT TO A NEW MAC
Copy the folder, point the app
To move to another Mac, copy the vault folder over — by drive, AirDrop, cloud, or git — install SynthOS, and point it at the folder. The graph, the projects, and every link come with it, because they were always inside the files.
KEEP ONE SOURCE OF TRUTH
Sync carefully across machines
If you keep the vault in a synced folder so two Macs share it, let one finish writing before the other picks it up — the same care any file-sync tool asks for. Plain markdown also merges cleanly in git if you’d rather version it than sync it.
There’s no proprietary backup path and no export to request. Whatever backs up a folder backs up your vault, byte for byte.
WHERE TO GO NEXT
Now put the brain to work.
You know what the vault is and why it’s yours. Next: the concepts behind it, the surfaces that fill it, and how to turn a vault into something others can use.
Real markdown files you own · Obsidian-compatible · Local-first · Canceling never holds your work hostage.