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Obsidian: wikilinks, content maps and memory types

The link written between double brackets weaves a network rather than a stack of folders, the content map that gathers them is a community practice and not a feature of the software, and a note of type user in Claude Code's automatic memory stays filed under its project by default, unless explicitly configured otherwise: the memories genuinely shared across all projects are the personal instructions file, user-level rules and the organisation-managed policy.

The link between two double square brackets, written as [[Note name]], is a native feature of Obsidian, a note-taking application built on local files: it connects one note to another directly, without depending on the folder each one sits in. A note can thus belong to several threads of thought at once, whereas filing into single folders forces a single choice for each file.

A vocabulary of types shared by coincidence

Claude Code's automatic memory, covered in the lesson on the structure of the memory folder, classifies each file by a type field with four values, exactly as the software writes them:

The four values of Claude Code's type field: user, feedback, project, reference

Many people who keep a personal Obsidian vault reuse this same vocabulary to file their own notes into subfolders, feedback, project, reference. The two systems look alike by the name of their categories, but they are two separate tools, with two distinct storage locations: one lives in the folder of the project open with Claude Code, the other in a vault of files managed by a separate application, installed on the person's own machine.

A note of type user stays locked inside its own project, by default

The name of the user type suggests a global memory, valid wherever you work. The documentation says that every project opened with Claude Code receives, by default, its own memory folder, including for notes of type user: a note written in one project stays filed in that project's own folder, it does not become accessible from a second project opened under the same account, unless this behaviour is changed. Two documented settings reverse it: the CLAUDE_CODE_PROJECT_DIR_NAME variable makes all projects launched under the same configuration share the same automatic memory folder, and the autoMemoryDirectory settings key lets you choose a different storage location.

[[Second cerveau]]

This link, written in an Obsidian note, points to another note named Second cerveau, wherever it sits in the vault. The memories genuinely shared across all Claude Code projects, by default, are the personal instructions file written by the person themselves, the user-level rules placed in ~/.claude/rules/, and the organisation-managed policy file, loaded at the start of every session regardless of which project is open.

The content map, a practice and not a button

A content map is a note that gathers, through links between double square brackets, every thread that touches on a single subject. It is not a file type recognised by Obsidian, nor a button in the software: it is a practice popularised by people who organise their notes using the method known as Zettelkasten, a notebook of linked cards, which anyone is free to adopt or ignore. Building a content map amounts to writing an ordinary note, then pasting into it the links to every note that deserves to appear there.