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Labs & the Idea Pipeline

AgentArmy designs flow through three surfaces, from raw idea to published doc. Each has a distinct job; commitment and visibility rise top → bottom.

Stage Surface Holds Where
1 · Skunkworks & Labs (WIP) Obsidian vault (in-repo) research, ideation, shared design-in-progress, ontology / entity-relationship modeling obsidian/labs/AgentArmyLabs/ (committed) · humans also at https://publish.obsidian.md/xlabs
2 · Work Project board committed tasks, status, who's-doing-what Project #1
3 · Docs this site completed, stable documentation you're here

Why the vault is in the repo

The WIP design surface lives in the repository at obsidian/labs/AgentArmyLabs/, not the GitHub Wiki. A wiki is a separate git repo that cloud coding agents (Codex, Copilot) never receive in their microVM sandbox — so it cannot be a shared agent surface. The vault is part of the normal checkout, so every agent (Claude, Codex, Copilot) can read and edit it, and it is version-controlled and reviewable like any other code.

Only the note content is tracked. Per-user app state (.obsidian/) and the deleted-notes folder (.trash/) are gitignored.

How a design matures

  • Skunkworks & Labs — Obsidian vault. Ideas are born and shared here; the graph view is the thinking tool, ideal for ontology and entity-relationship work. Agents write to it using the Obsidian skills (markdown, wikilinks, bases, canvas) and collaborate via PRs to obsidian/labs/. Humans use the Obsidian app and the published mirror at https://publish.obsidian.md/xlabs.
  • Work — Board. Once committed as a task on Project #1, with intent and status.
  • Docs — this site. Once a design is stable, a summary graduates here (MkDocs).

Ontology has a destination

Entities and relations are modeled in the Obsidian vault (the graph) → and graduate into ArcadeDB vertex/edge schema and the OpenAPI contract (the universal data adapter's common data model). The vault is where the graph is designed and agreed; ArcadeDB is where it runs; docs/ is where the stable summary is published.

Retired: the GitHub Wiki is no longer the Labs surface — microVM agents can't reach it. Its pages were migrated into the in-repo vault (see Ontology Pipeline).

Publishing the vault to your Obsidian cloud (operator setup)

Git is the source of truth. Agents commit notes to obsidian/labs/AgentArmyLabs/ via PRs. Getting those into the publish.obsidian.md/xlabs mirror (and across your devices via Obsidian Sync) runs on your machine — Obsidian Publish and Obsidian Sync are app-driven and have no server-side / CI API, so there is no GitHub Action that can push to your Obsidian cloud. The bridge is your local Obsidian app.

The repo does not auto-publish the vault. deploy-docs.yml builds MkDocs from docs/ → GitHub Pages only; it never touches obsidian/. And .obsidian/ (incl. the Publish config) is gitignored, so each device configures its own.

One-time setup (the git → cloud bridge):

  1. Point Obsidian at the repo folder. Open …/AgentArmy/obsidian/labs/AgentArmyLabs/ as a vault in the Obsidian app (or set your existing xlabs vault to that path), so the vault is the git checkout.
  2. Install obsidian-git (Community Plugins) and enable:
  3. Pull on startup + Auto pull interval (e.g. 10 min) — pulls merged agent notes so they appear locally without a manual git pull.
  4. Leave auto-commit/auto-push OFF — agents author via PRs; you don't want the app committing on top of that (it causes conflicts and noise).
  5. Obsidian Publish → connect the vault to the xlabs site → enable auto-publish changed notes (or publish manually after a pull). This is what pushes to publish.obsidian.md/xlabs.
  6. (Optional) Obsidian Sync for cross-device mirroring — independent of Publish, same app-driven caveat.

Flow: agent PR merges to main → obsidian-git auto-pulls into your vault → Obsidian Publish pushes changed notes to xlabs. Requires the Obsidian app running on your box — there is no headless path.

Caveats: keep obsidian-git auto-commit off (avoid colliding with agent PRs); if you also edit notes locally, resolve git conflicts in the app; per-device .obsidian/ config is gitignored, so repeat steps 2–3 on each device you publish from.