Side project · 2026 · 4 min read
My AI operating system.
Obsidian is the memory, Hermes is the hands, and Claude Code builds the tools. I designed it like a product with one user: me.
- Role
- Solo: design, setup, writing
- Timeline
- Ongoing, 2026
- Surfaces
- iPhone, Mac, Telegram
- Tools
- Obsidian, Hermes Agent, Claude Code, Shortcuts
- Status
- In daily use
The problem
My reminders went off at 9 am, on the train. By the time I reached the place they were about, I had forgotten them.
Notes sat in three apps. Money moved through five banks and cards, each with its own alerts. Every AI chat started from zero, so I explained my life again each time.
The system
Each piece does one job. The phone notices, the Mac decides, and Telegram is the only place I look.
The daily flow runs left to right. The vault and Claude Code sit behind the Mac.
Memory
Obsidian vault
Notes, plans and a money ledger. Hermes reads it before it answers.
iPhone
Shortcuts
Alarm off, joining office Wi-Fi, arriving home, paying with Apple Pay.
iCloud Drive
A small text file
Each trigger writes one line: what happened and when.
Mac
Scripts and Hermes
A watcher picks up the file. Cron jobs run the rest on a schedule.
Telegram
One chat
Every message lands here. I reply in the same place.
Workshop
Claude Code and skills
Writes and fixes the scripts, and does the design and build work.
The memory
Every note links to others. Hermes follows those links, so its answers draw on my own notes.
Daily notes, plans, money and research live in one Obsidian vault. Before Hermes replies, it reads the notes around the question.
- ~390
- notes in one vault
- 1,200+
- links between them
- 20
- folders, one memory
A day in Telegram
Five triggers on a normal day. The grey labels show them: an alarm, a Wi-Fi network, a payment, the clock, a location.
The parcel reminder waits until I walk into the lobby, the one place I can act on it. A reminder at 9 am would only get swiped away.
Messages and amounts are mock examples.
Design principles
One inbox
Everything arrives in one Telegram chat. I don’t open five apps to find out what happened.
Quiet by default
Silent unless it matters. A price watch that finds nothing sends nothing.
Cheap by default
Plain scripts first, with no AI where a rule will do. A small model for routine sorting, the big model only for judgement.
Human in the loop
It never sends, pays or deletes without asking me. Passwords stay in a vault it can’t read.
Context over prompts
The vault is the memory. Answers start from my own notes, so I stop repeating myself.
What I designed
My part
- Which moments deserve a message, and which stay silent
- The message format: symbol, amount, label, one line
- The triggers, tied to where I can act
- What needs my yes before it happens
- How the vault is filed, so it can be read
The tools’ part
- Hermes runs the jobs and talks to me in Telegram
- Claude Code writes, tests and fixes the scripts
- Shortcuts and iCloud carry signals from phone to Mac
- Models read, sort and summarise
What didn’t work
The wake brief arrived late.
iCloud can take minutes to sync, and the Mac was reading its own older copy of the wake file. Now it waits for the phone’s copy to land before sending.
One stray space broke a trigger.
A Shortcut saved its file as “place.txt .txt”, so the watcher never saw it. Now I check the exact file the Mac receives, not the Shortcut’s settings.
Marketplaces block bots.
Price watches hit bot walls on the big shopping sites. I chose not to work around them. Hermes watches what it’s allowed to, and I check the rest myself.
What changed
Reminders reach me where I can act on them, and I ignore far fewer.
Spending is logged when I pay, so the monthly check-in starts from one ledger. New AI chats start from my notes instead of a blank page. And when I want a new job, I describe it to Claude Code and review what it builds.
What’s next
A one-minute screen recording of a day in Telegram, with mock data. Then a short guide, so other designers can copy the parts they want. And moving more routine jobs from models to plain scripts.
Like my projects? Email me jordychew93@gmail.com or LinkedIn↗