Grown, not organized.
A finished life and knowledge system for Obsidian.
You have rebuilt your setup more than once, saved a thousand things and remember a handful. Sylvics is the system you were trying to build, already built: one Obsidian vault for what you learn, what you do and how your days go. You stop building and start using it.
Obsidian desktopmacOS, Windows, LinuxPlain Markdown files you own
Does this sound like you?
Tick whatever is true. Each one opens the answer, and I will mark the parts of this page that show it working. Nothing you tick leaves your browser.
Sylvics arrives finished: ten folders, the pages drawn, the routine set. You start using it on day one.
Take the tourEvery source moves from their words, to their idea in yours, to an idea of your own. That is the part that sticks.
How an idea maturesOne vault for notes, plans, habits, reading and reflection, as plain files on your computer.
The ten foldersPlans connect from who you want to become down to today's task, so a goal always has a next step.
Plans that connectCapture in seconds, decide on Sunday. The Inbox goes back to zero once a week, in fifteen minutes.
The 15-minute reviewNo streaks to break. After a gap you do the Return, a short catch-up, and you are back.
The Return
It's not a memory problem. It's architecture.
Spending forty minutes across five apps looking for one good idea, and not finding it, is not a failure of discipline. It is what happens when what you save, what you know and what you do live in places that never meet.
Saved, highlighted, never processed. A month later it is gone, and you read it again.
The insight lives in a note. The work lives in a task app. Nothing carries one to the other.
Weeks go by without anyone asking whether they went where you meant them to.
One place, where every note has a path.
Notes, tasks, goals, habits, highlights and the journal, which today live in a dozen apps, go into one Obsidian vault: ten folders of plain files on your computer. That was my own mess for years, and this is how I got out of it.
The folders follow a note's life. It lands in the Inbox, becomes a task or an idea, gets used, and is kept or let go. Nothing stays by accident.
- 00 - Atlasdashboards
- 01 - Inboxunsorted
- 02 - Planningthings with an end
- 03 - Areasthings with no end
- 04 - Resourcesraw material
- 05 - Literaturenotes on a source
- 06 - Permanentyour own ideas
- 07 - Journalreflection
- 08 - Archivefinished
- 99 - Metathe machinery
One minute, one real thought.
This is the centre of the system, and the first ten minutes inside the vault. Type something that is on your mind, send it to the Inbox, decide what it is, and see it land where you work. The other jots are from Mira's Inbox: she is the invented person whose year fills the example vault.
Type something real. It never leaves this page, promise.
The Inbox health tile follows the vault's own rule: Optimal at zero, Warning when the oldest jot is a week old or the queue reaches 30, Critical at ten days or 50. Nothing you type leaves this page.
Four things I think most advice gets wrong.
Sylvics is opinionated on purpose. These are the opinions. If you disagree with all of them, it is probably not for you, and I would rather you knew now.
-
01
They say
Capture everything. You never know what you will need.Capture freely, keep little. A note earns its place by being used.
The weekly heartbeat -
02
They say
Your second brain remembers so you don't have to.Saving is not learning. A thought is finished only when you have used it or said it in your own words.
A Zettelkasten you can keep -
03
They say
Build your own system. Only you know what fits.Stop building. Start from a finished system and change only what creates friction.
One rule, three keystones -
04
They say
Read widely, just in case.Learn just in time. Fetch the smallest thing your work is asking for, then go back to work.
The Loop
See what is alive.
The Canopy is a 3D graph of your whole vault with twelve views. Each view answers one question, explains itself with a legend, writes its findings in plain sentences, and can replay how the vault grew. Three of them are below, drawn in your browser from the example vault's real notes and links.
Watch a real vault grow.
The live vault is a read-only copy of a Sylvics vault's knowledge notes: sources, notes on what was read, and the ideas that came out of them. It updates each time I publish from Obsidian. You can open any note, follow its links and see the graph.
For now it holds the example vault. When my growing-in-public series starts, my own notes take its place, week by week.
411 notes888 linkslast published 12 October 2026
- My own idea💎 Clutter is a failure of thinking before it is a failure of styleWhen a paragraph of mine is cluttered, I have usually not decided what it says. The extra words are not decoration. They…
- Notes on a source📖 Orwell on stale languageParaphrase, not quotation. First read at university. Reread on 15 and 16 November because Zinsser kept pointing at it…
- Notes on a source📖 Zinsser on clutterParaphrase, not quotation. Bought at Folio Books, read 27 October to 8 November. I skipped the chapters on sports and…
- My own idea💎 Demand swings grow as they travel away from the customerA small change in what the final customer wants becomes a large change by the time it reaches the people furthest from…
Fresh off the branch. Click one: it opens the way it looks in Obsidian.
Your notes stay plain files, on your computer.
Every note is a Markdown file in a folder you choose. Sylvics reads the properties at the top and draws the page. Delete Sylvics tomorrow and the files still open in any text editor.
The file on your disk
Status: 🌳 Mature Cluster: - Psychology - Personal Development North_Upstream_Files: - "[[📖 Lally on how long a habit takes]]" West_Similar_Files: - "[[💎 A habit takes months and not three weeks]]" Center_Mechanism: "Habit strength builds as a curve that flattens over many repetitions. One omission removes one repetition out of dozens…" The rule that forbids missing is the rule that turns one miss into ten.
The same file in Sylvics
💎 One missed day does not break a habit
“A miss is noise, two misses are a decision, and I would like to be present when I make it.”
06 - Permanent / 💎 One missed day does not break a habit.md
Is Sylvics for you?
Probably, if
- you use Obsidian on a computer, or are ready to
- you have built a system of your own at least once and want to stop
- you read demanding material and want it to turn into your own thinking
- you want one place for notes, plans, habits and reflection
- you would rather own your files and pay once than rent another app
Probably not, if
- you need a shared wiki for a team
- you work mostly on a phone: Sylvics is desktop only
- you want a blank notebook: Sylvics is opinionated and asks for a daily note and a weekly review
- you need something finished and polished today: this is a beta, and some parts are rough
The time it asks for: about ten minutes a day, and fifteen to thirty minutes on Sunday. Less than most of us spend reorganising a notes app.
Made by one person, for his own life first.
No photo, at least for now. Let the work do the smiling.
Hi there! I'm Matthieu. I study law in France. I built Sylvics because my notes had turned into a storage locker: lectures, books and plans, saved with care and almost never used again.
I built it for my own studies and my own life first, and only later made it usable by others. I first called it Life Vault. Then I realised nothing living belongs in a vault. Sylva is Latin for forest.
Sylvics is opinionated, because the hardest part of any system is deciding how it should work. I would rather make those decisions once, carefully, than have you spend another winter building.
I won't show my face (at least for now), but I'll happily show my work: the live vault grows in public, and the closed beta is small so that I can read every message myself. Yes, every one.
Matthieu
Founder of Sylvics · Verdant Cybernetics · Tend well.
What is Sylvics?
Sylvics is a finished life and knowledge system for Obsidian. It is a ready-made vault of ten numbered folders plus a custom plugin, sylvics-core, that turns notes into dashboards, a daily routine, a planning system, periodic reviews and a 3D graph called the Canopy. Everything is stored as plain Markdown files on your own computer.
It is for people who use Obsidian and are tired of building their own system. You open it and start using it.
Where are my notes stored? Do I own them?
On your own computer, as plain Markdown (.md) files in a folder you choose. There is no Sylvics account and no Sylvics server that receives your notes. You can open, copy, back up or move the files with any tool, and they stay readable in any text editor.
Does Sylvics work on my phone?
Sylvics is desktop only: macOS, Windows or Linux. If you sync the vault to Obsidian on a phone you can read and edit the notes, but the dashboards, the graph and the assistant do not run there.
Does Sylvics use AI? What does it send, and where?
Only if you turn it on. The assistant, Sage, is off by default. When enabled it answers questions from your own notes, using either a local model through Ollama, which keeps everything on your computer, or your own API key for a provider you choose (Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter or any OpenAI-compatible service). Your notes go directly from your computer to that provider. Nothing passes through a Sylvics server.
Each answer lists the notes that were sent as context, and you can exclude any note, tag or folder. Sage acts only when you ask. Nothing runs while Obsidian is closed.
In the closed beta, Sage arrives in the second build, after a privacy review.
How much will Sylvics cost?
Prices are not set yet. The plan is a free version and a one-time paid licence for the extra features, with no subscription for the core system. Final prices will be decided after the beta, partly from what testers tell us.
Closed-beta testers use the full product for free during the beta and receive a discount on the first paid licences.
Can I get a refund?
Yes. If Sylvics is not right for you, write to me within 60 days of buying and I will refund you in full. No form, no argument, no questions you have to answer. Payments go through Lemon Squeezy, which processes the refund and keeps the same 60-day window for itself.
During the closed beta there is nothing to refund: it is free.
You're one person. What happens if you stop?
A fair question, and I would ask it too. Three things protect you.
- Your notes never depend on me. They are plain Markdown files on your computer and open in any text editor, with or without Sylvics.
- What you buy keeps working. The licence unlocks features; it never holds your notes. Sylvics does not need a server of mine to run.
- If I ever stop developing Sylvics, I will publish a final release that needs no licence at all, so everything you paid for keeps working for as long as Obsidian runs it. I will say so publicly, with notice, not disappear.
I do not plan to stop. I built Sylvics for my own studies and life first, and that does not end when sales slow down.
Plant it once. Tend it daily.
Up to 15 testers, in two waves from early November. It is free for the length of the beta, and everyone who finishes the exit survey gets a discount on their first licence. I read every application.