Summarize weekly notes

Summarize Weekly Notes

Create a concise weekly note from daily notes in 00-Inbox/ plus a small amount of backlink context fetched through the obsidian CLI.

Goal

Produce or update 00-Inbox/YYYY-Www.md with these sections:

# YYYY-Www

## Top Learning

- ...

## Achievements

- ...

## Ongoing Priorities

- ...

## Context

- Daily notes reviewed: [[...]], [[...]]
- Related notes reviewed via backlinks: [[...]], [[...]]

The note should synthesize, not chronicle. Prefer themes, leverage points, and durable patterns over a day-by-day recap.

When To Use

Use this skill when the user asks to:

• create a weekly note like 2026-W10
• summarize a date range that maps to a week
• review daily notes and related backlink notes
• extract top learnings, achievements, and ongoing priorities for a week

Core Principles

• Start from the daily notes; backlinks are supporting context, not the main source.
• Use obsidian CLI for backlink retrieval and for reading backlink notes when helpful.
• Read backlink notes progressively. Only open the ones that are clearly relevant, repeated, or high-signal.
• Keep the weekly note compact and opinionated.
• Prefer durable takeaways over meeting logistics.
• Preserve existing weekly-note content if the file already has meaningful material; update it instead of blindly replacing it.
• If the week is still in progress and one or more daily notes do not exist yet, write the summary as a partial week and note that in ## Context.

Workflow

1. Determine the target week

Translate the requested week into a date range.

Examples:

• 2026-W10 -> 2026-03-02 through 2026-03-08
• 2026-W11 -> 2026-03-09 through 2026-03-15
• 2026-W12 -> 2026-03-16 through 2026-03-22

Read the target weekly note first if it already exists.

2. Read the daily notes

Read all available daily notes for the week from 00-Inbox/YYYY-MM-DD.md.

Important:

• Missing daily notes are normal for partial weeks.
• Daily notes are the primary evidence base.
• Pay special attention to:
  • repeated people or projects
  • completed tasks that changed execution velocity
  • explicit [[Learning]] lines
  • architecture or workflow notes that will matter again
  • patterns in blockers, debugging, shipping, or collaboration

3. Fetch backlinks with obsidian

For each daily note, fetch backlinks:

obsidian backlinks file="2026-03-09" format=json

Use the results to identify which notes are worth reading for context.

Prioritize backlink notes that are:

• repeated across multiple days
• clearly central people for the week
• reference notes that explain a major theme from the week
• directly connected to the work being summarized

Do not read every backlink note by default.

4. Read only the highest-signal backlink notes

Use obsidian read for the selected backlink notes:

obsidian read path="02-SlipBox/Ashaya Sharma.md"
obsidian read path="03-Reference/Build agents that run automatically Cursor Automation.md"

Good candidates:

• manager / close collaborators repeatedly mentioned during the week
• reference notes that anchor a major learning thread
• roadmap or architecture notes that explain why the week mattered

5. Distill the week

Synthesize into four sections.

## Top Learning

Capture the most important shifts in understanding.

Good content:

• clearer role definition
• sharper debugging heuristics
• architectural mental models
• workflow lessons
• strategic insights about where to contribute

Avoid:

• meeting attendance logs
• one-off errands
• generic statements with no week-specific signal

## Achievements

Capture meaningful progress and shipped outcomes.

Good content:

• fixes landed or substantially progressed
• tooling or setup that materially improved execution
• relationship/context gains that unlock future work
• notes, automations, or docs that became reusable assets

Prefer grouped bullets over a long chronological list.

## Ongoing Priorities

Capture what should continue after the week ends.

These should feel like active threads, not stale todos.

Examples:

• finishing a release path
• deepening a part of the codebase
• developing a PoC direction
• strengthening a workflow or relationship surface

## Context

Always include:

• the daily notes reviewed
• the backlink notes reviewed

If partial week:

• add a note that the summary is partial because one or more daily notes do not exist yet

6. Writing style

• Use concise prose bullets.
• When writing nested bullet points in markdown, use 4-space indentation.
• Prefer [[Wikilinks]] for people, projects, and concepts already represented by notes.
• Emphasize "what changed this week" and "what now matters more".
• Do not overfit to exact section wording from the daily notes.
• Avoid copying large passages verbatim.

Heuristics For Selecting Backlink Notes

Read a backlink note if it is any of the following:

• someone mentioned multiple times across the week
• the main reviewer / manager / collaborator for a key task
• a reference note that explains a major architecture or workflow concept
• a note that already summarizes a topic spread across multiple daily entries

Skip or deprioritize backlink notes when they are:

• mentioned once with no bearing on the weekly themes
• purely social context unless it materially changes collaboration
• redundant with what is already explicit in the daily notes

Partial Week Rule

When the requested week includes future or missing days:

• summarize only from the notes that exist
• still create the weekly note if the user asked for it
• add a short note in ## Context explaining that the week is partial

Recommended Command Pattern

Use the obsidian CLI outside the sandbox if needed for live vault integration.

Typical sequence:

obsidian backlinks file="2026-03-16" format=json
obsidian read path="02-SlipBox/Ashaya Sharma.md"

Quality Bar

Before finishing, verify:

• the weekly note is not a day-by-day diary
• each section contains high-signal synthesis
• the ## Context section lists the source notes actually reviewed
• any partial-week limitation is stated clearly
• the resulting note is concise enough to skim quickly