This vault uses tags instead of a folder hierarchy, so any note can live at multiple intersections of topic simultaneously. Obsidian’s search, graph view, and Dataview all work better with tags than with nested folders.

Tags also drive the site: /Notes, /Projects, /Practice-of-Product and /Travel filter by them, and Constellation maps which tags keep appearing together.

The Taxonomy

Every note carries at least one topic. Everything else sits on top of that.

Topic

Tag	Use for
#ai	AI broadly: predictions, strategy, and reviews of AI companies and tools.
#ai-infra	Chips, inference, GPU clouds, benchmarks and the AI stack.
#ai-agents	Agents and agentic tools: frameworks, CLI agents, MCP, my own agent fleet.
#pm-practice	The craft of product management: discovery, prioritization, process, planning.
#pm-teams	Building product teams: hiring, levels and attributes, performance reviews, org design.
#strategy	Strategy frameworks and their application.
#leadership	Leading people: lessons, principles, decisions, communication.
#sales	Sales, go-to-market and pricing.
#discovery	Customer research: interviews, opportunity trees, assumption testing.
#design	Product and visual design, data visualization, simplicity.
#prompts	Reusable prompts and system prompt design.
#service	Public service and social impact: veterans work, elections, refugees, citizenship.
#gun-violence	Gun violence prevention: Everytown, the VAC, the Tracer project. Always paired with #service.
#military	Military service, veterans, and lessons from military leaders.
#family	Kids and family: trips, camps, activities, projects with the kids.
#travel	Trip guides and travel notes.
#theatre	Plays we have seen or have tickets for.
#personal	Personal interests and life outside work.
#compass	The principles I steer by.

Format

Tag	Use for
#review	Reviews of articles, podcasts, papers and products.
#events	Conferences, retreats and panels.
#quotes	Quotations and passages worth keeping.

Place

Where a note is about somewhere — a trip guide, a country page, work tied to one place. It is not a tag for every note written at home.

Tag	Use for
#ireland	Ireland: the country guide and every county, peninsula and town note under it.
#france	France, including the 2026 southern France trip.
#scotland	Scotland.
#iceland	Iceland.
#canada	Canada.
#united-states	Travel at home: the New England campgrounds and the Boston notes.
#mexico	Mexico.
#ukraine	Ukraine.
#afghanistan	Afghanistan, including the evacuation work.

Smaller places sit alongside their country, never instead of it: #paris, #arles (with #france), #montreal (with #canada), #boston (with #united-states), #matamoros (with #mexico). So /Travel filtered to #ireland returns all seven Irish notes, and adding #paris narrows to the city.

Ireland goes a level deeper, because that is how the guides are organised: country, then county, then town.

Tag	Use for
#kerry	County Kerry: the county guide, the Dingle and Iveragh peninsulas, and Tralee.
#dublin	County Dublin and the city.
#galway	County Galway and the city.
#tralee	Tralee, the county town. Pair with #kerry.

Where a county and its city share a name, so does the tag — one note covers both, and splitting them would invent a distinction the vault does not make. Clare, Cork and Limerick get passing mentions but no guide, so they get no tag until one exists.

Campgrounds take the country tag only: Wolfe’s Neck and Coastal Acres are places in a note, not places the taxonomy tracks.

Theatre detail

#huntington for a play seen at the Huntington, plus the season: #season-2025-2026, #season-2026-2027.

Status

Tag	Use for
#draft	Not finished. Kept out of /news and the homepage’s Latest, but still browsable in /Notes.

Provenance

#ai-generated when a model or agent wrote it, paired with the specific #model/... and #agent/... tags, e.g. #model/claude-opus-5, #agent/claude-code.

Rules of Thumb

One note, many tags. Pricing carries #pm-practice and #sales at once. Don’t force a single home.

Topic first. Every note needs at least one topic tag; format, status and provenance are additions, never the only tag.

Keep the list short. Before adding a tag, ask whether an existing one covers it. A tag earns its place when several notes share it — a tag on one note adds nothing to search or the map.

Places are the exception. A city tag goes on a note that guides you around that city even when it is the only one, because the next note about that city should find it waiting. They stay off the map until two notes share them, which is the map’s own rule, not a reason to skip the tag.

Where tags live. On the first line of the note, or under the H1 when the note opens with one. Notes that keep frontmatter put them in the tags: list instead. Either works; the site reads both.

Retagging is free. The build ignores commits that only change tags, so filing a note doesn’t push it back to the top of /news.

Tags retired in the 2026-09-17 pass. #civic/#citizenship → #service; #gvp/#everytown → #gun-violence; #usmc → #military; #kids/#soccer → #family; #travel-guide → #travel; #communication/#management/#product-leadership → #leadership; #team/#feedback → #pm-teams; #podcast-review/#paper-review/#product-review/#product-teardown/#academic → #review; #ai-assistant/gemini → #ai-generated + #model/.... Dropped outright: #clippings, #security, #biosecurity.

Dataview Example Queries

Find all draft AI notes:

LIST FROM #ai AND #draft

Find everything about the Tracer work:

LIST FROM #gun-violence

Find all reviews, newest first:

TABLE file.ctime AS "Created" FROM #review SORT file.ctime DESC