Smarty Vault: Unify Your Academic Life

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The modern academic career is fragmented, often requiring students to juggle coursework, research files, and professional networking data across disparate systems. Smarty Vault is a unified, shell-script-driven organization system built on the powerful foundation of Obsidian and designed to solve this fragmentation.

Smarty Vault's philosophy is simple: maximize consistency, minimize friction.

... (rest of README follows) The modern academic career is fragmented, often requiring students to juggle coursework, research files, and professional networking data across disparate systems. Smarty Vault is a unified, shell-script-driven organization system built on the powerful foundation of Obsidian and designed to solve this fragmentation.

Smarty Vault's philosophy is simple: maximize consistency, minimize friction.

It's a dedicated workflow engine that allows users to:

1. Professionalize Output: maintain an organized system of raw, Obsidian-based Markdown files along with consistent, publication-ready PDFs all in one file system.

2. Streamline Organization: Enforce a reliable, consistent directory structure across all academic activities, from active coursework to long-term research.

3. Build Your Network: Maintain a focused, up-to-date Career Relationship Management (CRM) database for tracking professional contacts, organizations, and events, allowing for quick retrieval and snapshot compilation of networking efforts.

By placing scripts, raw files, and a personal knowledge vault in a single, portable directory, Smarty Vault ensures you spend your time mastering material instead of managing files.

Directory Structure

Smarty Vault uses the following directory structure:

/
├── init.sh                 
├── LICENSE                 
├── README.md               
└── template-root/                                
    ├── .scripts/
    │   ├── compilation/
    │   │   ├── crm-compile.sh
    │   │   └── pandoc-compile.sh
    │   │   └── view.sh
    │   ├── file-management/
    │   │   ├── archive-course.sh
    │   │   ├── archive-project.sh
    │   │   ├── new-course.sh
    │   │   ├── new-exploration.sh
    │   │   ├── new-project.sh
    │   │   ├── remove-course.sh
    │   │   ├── remove-exploration.sh
    │   │   └── remove-project.sh
    │   │   ├── unarchive-course.sh
    │   │   ├── unarchive-project.sh
    │   │   ├── vault.sh
    │   └── system-health/
    │       ├── check-health.sh
    │       └── package.sh
    ├── 00.academic-network/    
    ├── 01.courses/
    │   └── 00.archived/
    ├── 02.engagements-projects/
    │   └── 00.archived/
    ├── 03.research-exploration/
    └── 04.vault/          
        └── 00.academic-network/
            ├── 00.templates/
            │   ├── 01.person-template.md
            │   ├── 02.org-template.md
            │   └── 03.event-template.md
            ├── 01.people/
            ├── 02.orgs/
            ├── 03.events/
            └── CRM-DASHBOARD.md

The provided directories and scripts serve the following purposes:

template-root/

Root of the system. Stores all non-Obsidian files: compiled PDFs (assignments, research papers), reference materials (textbooks), and code repositories.

All .scripts/ use this as the base working directory.

00.academic-network/

Target directory for compiled Career Relationship Management (CRM) reports. Stores PDF snapshots of your network at different points in time.

Reports can be generated using crm-compile.sh.

01.courses/

Stores compiled output for coursework: finalized lecture notes, submitted problem sets, and graded assignments.

new-course.sh, archive-course.sh, unarchive-course.sh, and remove-course.sh can be used to manipulate files stored within this directory.

Sample Course Subdirectory

When running new-course.sh, the following standard folder is created within 01.courses/ to ensure uniformity for every class:

template-root/
└── 01.courses/
    └── [COURSE-NAME]/
        ├── assignments/
        │   ├── raw/           <-- Your editable source files (Markdown/Obsidian/LaTeX)
        │   └── submissions/   <-- Compiled, final PDFs sent to the instructor
        ├── notes/
        │   ├── lecture/       <-- Compiled, organized lecture notes (e.g., PDF)
        │   └── misc/          <-- Compiled auxiliary materials (e.g., PDF)
        ├── textbooks/         <-- Reference E-Books or digital readings
        └── code/              <-- Scripts, notebooks, or project codebases

The code/ subdirectory is optional and can be added using the --code flag.

02.engagement-projects/

Holds compiled output for non-course, structured work, like internships, committee roles, or group projects.

new-project.sh, archive-project.sh, unarchive-project.sh, and remove-project.sh can be used to manipulate files stored within this directory.

03.research-exploration/

Stores long-term, exploratory work, including original research codebases, data files, and manuscripts.

new-exploration.sh and remove-exploration.sh can be used to manipulate files stored within this directory.

04.vault/

The Obsidian Vault. This folder contains all your editable, plain-text Markdown files, serving as the single source of truth for your knowledge and data.

vault.sh can be used to automatically open Obsidian at the vault subdirectory. However, note that you will need to manually open this vault through the Obsidian GUI once during setup to register it.

Setup and Dependencies

1. Dependencies and Prerequisites

• Obsidian: Installed on your system.
• LaTeX Build Tool (latexmk, xelatex etc.): Installed on your system and added to your system PATH. Smarty Vault assumes latexmk by default, so if you are using another compiler you would have to alter the script.
• Zathura: Necessary for using view.sh.
• fzf: Installed on your system. fzf is a fuzzy finder for making pandoc-compile.sh and view.sh more effective and frictionless.
• Pandoc: Installed on your system and added to your system PATH (required for pandoc-compile.sh and crm-compile.sh to convert Markdown/LaTeX to professional PDFs).
• Shell Environment: A Unix-like shell (Bash/Zsh on macOS/Linux, or WSL/Git Bash on Windows) to run the .sh scripts.

2. Initial Setup

• Clone the Repository: Download the entire Smarty Vault structure onto your local system.
• Run Initialization: Open your system terminal (or the integrated Obsidian Terminal pane) and navigate to the repository's root directory (/).
• Execute the initial setup script: ./init.sh.
• Create Your Vault: In Obsidian, open the 04.vault/ directory as a new vault.

3. Obsidian Plugin Installation (Recommended)

Install these community plugins to maximize the functionality of your Vault:

• Dataview: Essential for querying the structured data (metadata/YAML) in your notes and transforming the raw CRM files into the unified CRM-DASHBOARD.md view.
• Metadata Menu: Highly recommended for enforcing data consistency and streamlining input when creating new contacts, organizations, and events.
• Latex Suite: Highly recommended if your academic work involves frequent mathematical or scientific notation, as it dramatically speeds up LaTeX typing.

4. Synchronization (Optional but Recommended)

If you need to access your vault across multiple computers, use a third-party synchronization tool:

• Rclone is an excellent choice for syncing the entire directory structure with services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive while maintaining local control.
• Alternatively, you can use Obsidian Sync for the contents of the 04.vault/ folder, and a standard cloud service (like Google Drive) for the rest of the template-root/ and compiled files.