![[digital_garden_revamp.png]] Been a while since I have organised my Obsidian publish site. A few months ago, I began a Substack and since then have spent more time writing on there. Whilst I continued to add content onto my Obsidian vault as drafts and unfinished bullets, I didn't clean up the site. Over time, my notes just grew in number, none of them were finished and most of them were never even revisited. I was scribbling bits when I could in between my hectic work days, but not revisiting them meant I never really imbibed any of the information on there. So, December 2025 was the month of Obsidian digital garden revamp! Here is what I did - in case you've been waiting for some inspiration to organise your own vault. Fair warning, the steps I took were driven by utility over glamour. ## Accepting the idea of the "Digital Garden" Though I first came across the "digital garden" idea 3 years ago, its only recently that I have begun to accept what it means. There has always been this sense of imposter syndrome and fear for me when I publish things online. My writing does not necessarily revolve around my profession, as I like to read multiple things and different disciplines of life do interest me. At one point, my imposter syndrome was so much that I chose to call this obsidian publish site as "a staging area for unfinished thoughts". This was almost a signal to any potential reader that I am not an expert and that I should not be yelled at for writing about something I don't have expert information on. However, after discovering the world of Substack-ers, I realised that the very process of writing is interpreted differently by different people. There are lots of thinkers, most way smarter than me, who do not shy away from letting the world see the multiple facets they have. People write not to just impress, but to express. Understanding this did a world of good to my confidence. This time I accepted this natural breadth of thinking that I have and have learnt to embrace it a bit more. Even this revamp of the digital garden was basically a decision undertaken on top of this new found acceptance of myself. ## Things I did ### Cleaned up the Obsidian Vault Cleaned up the obsidian vault by making use of the fantastic 1 hour video on using Claude Code with Obsidian by Mckay Wrigley. See [[A Better Obsidian Workflow with Claude]] for details on the exact changes I made to my own Obsidian vault with learnings from the video. I also updated my workflow for researching new topics. It's simple - two markdown files with instructions for how I want the Claude agent to perform its tasks. - `write-draft.md` - Write up a ~2000 word draft of a topic by only looking through a bunch of links I provide it - `draft-police.md` - Review the draft across several cognitive biases, fallacies, fluff and in-accurate claims by cross-referencing content from the provided links as well as web searches The workflow is deliberately simple to ensure I don't get AI to write all of my articles. The process of creation is still very much mine to control, but having the agent generate a draft quickly ensures I can understand the key ideas quickly. This is invaluable to me, especially since I am employed full time. ### Putting my name on it As I am a lot more confident with my writing now, I have finally decided to secure a domain (`ramshankaryadhunath.com` was available!). Since Obsidian publish makes it possible to add a custom domain, my digital garden now has a new location on the internet - [ramshankar yadhunath](https://ramshankaryadhunath.com/Start+Here). >[!info] >To setup your own custom domain for your Obsidian publish site, see [custom domains](https://help.obsidian.md/publish/domains). I got my domain from the Cloudflare Registrar. I've also set up web traffic analytics using [Plausible](https://plausible.io/), a privacy-first Google Analytics alternative. At $9 a month, their cheapest plan suits my site for now. If I get meaningful traffic, I'll write about whether it's worth sticking with. That's all about the revamp.