An opinionated markdown working environment for an AI agent that acts as your Chief of Staff.
Most "AI vault" templates are empty folders. This one ships with a method — a coherent set of operating rules, a knowledge-management structure, and an onboarding routine — so the moment you clone it, your agent already knows how to work. You supply who you are.
It is model-agnostic: it's plain markdown plus a set of conventions. Use it with Claude Code, Cursor, or any agent harness that reads files from a working directory.
| Layer | Files | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Boot docs | CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, SOUL.md |
Who the agent is, how it starts a session, its operating posture (stage-first, surface options, don't act unilaterally). |
| Method | DEVBRAIN.md, devbrain-handbook/ |
A full handbook: how to run technical work, classify notes, structure hubs, write tasks, link ideas, keep a learning loop. |
| Operating model | chief_of_staff/ |
The authority model (stage by default, promote on explicit instruction), a charter, and reusable skill specs (daily report, inbox triage, weekly review, change packs). |
| Structure | Projects/, Tasks/, Reference/, Archive/, _inbox/, memory/ |
A Zettelkasten-flavored knowledge vault with templates that demonstrate the format. |
| Onboarding | ONBOARDING.md |
A "grill me" interview the agent runs on first launch to learn how you work. |
git clone https://github.com/drkwjr/agent-vault.git my-vault
cd my-vaultThen open it in your agent of choice and start a session. There are three ways to make it yours:
- Let the agent interview you (recommended). On first launch the agent notices the vault is
unconfigured and offers to run
ONBOARDING.md— a one-question-at-a-time interview that fills inUSER.md,goals.md, andTOOLS.mdfor you. Just say "yes, onboard me." - Fill the templates yourself. Edit
USER.md(who you are),goals.md(your north star), andTOOLS.md(your local setup). Takes a few minutes. - Just talk. Tell the agent about yourself at the start of a session — it reads from context. Fill the files in later when you feel like it.
Optionally cp .env.example .env and add any keys your harness needs. .env is gitignored.
The agent is a Chief of Staff, not an autopilot. Its default move is to surface options and
stage work, not to act on its own. External or hard-to-reverse actions (sending an email, posting
publicly, deleting things) are staged as drafts and only executed when you explicitly say so.
Internal work — reading, organizing, drafting, classifying — it does freely. The whole devbrain-handbook/
exists to make the agent's process legible and consistent: pre-flight before acting, investigate before
editing, verify before claiming done.
This is a starting point, not scripture. Fork it, rename the chief_of_staff/ framing if it doesn't
fit, delete the skills you won't use, add your own conventions. The _TEMPLATE_*.md files in each folder
show the intended format — copy them when you create real notes.
MIT — see LICENSE. No personal data ships with this template.