Onboard

by ballred

Onboard is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by ballred in obsidian-claude-pkm.

1.8K stars124 forkson ballred/obsidian-claude-pkmAdded 2026/08/18+4% in starsRepository updated 2026/02/18

View source on GitHub Download repo ZIP

ai-agentsclaude-codegoal-trackingobsidianpkmproductivitysecond-brain

Install in seconds

Install Onboard

Copy Onboard into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/ballred/obsidian-claude-pkm/tree/main/vault-template/.claude/skills/onboard ~/.claude/skills/onboard

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/ballred/obsidian-claude-pkm.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: vault-template/.claude/skills/onboard/SKILL.md in ballred/obsidian-claude-pkm
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/onboard
Collection: One of 13 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Onboard does

Onboard interactively sets up an Obsidian vault and loads hierarchical context for Claude Code sessions. Use it on first run to personalize the vault or on subsequent runs to load full project and area context.

Onboard is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Onboard comes from a repository tagged ai-agents, claude-code, goal-tracking, obsidian and pkm.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Onboard Skill

Interactive vault setup (first run) and context loading (subsequent runs).

Usage

/onboard                    # Full onboard (setup if first run, context load if not)
/onboard Projects/MyProject # Load specific project context

First-Run Setup

If the file FIRST_RUN exists in the vault root, this is a new vault. Run the interactive setup:

Step 1: Welcome

Greet the user and explain what will happen:

"I'll ask a few questions to personalize your vault (~2 minutes)"
"Your answers are saved locally in vault-config.json"
"You can change these anytime by editing that file or running /onboard again"

Step 2: Ask Questions

Use AskUserQuestion to ask these interactively:

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Commands Onboard provides

Slash commands named in this skill’s SKILL.md, listed in the order they first appear.

/onboard
/review
/daily
/weekly
/monthly
/project

Frequently asked about Onboard

What else does ballred publish alongside Onboard?
Onboard is one of 13 skills that DirSkills catalogs from ballred/obsidian-claude-pkm, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Adopt Vault, Check Links and Daily. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Onboard does, and is maintained by ballred in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the ballred/obsidian-claude-pkm page.
How does Onboard compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Onboard ranks #918 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Onboard against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.