The Brain --> Obsidian vault (symlink)

README.md

What is this?

You can open your Brain folder in Obsidian but the file / folder names tells you nothing.

This script links markdown files, to transform:

./3c86000e-71a3-4253-9575-d798c8809929/Notes.md
./1e0d10d1-be54-524c-9504-0f28568a1931/Notes.md
./d9b80a07-8449-5e5d-948d-b3070242f149/Notes.md
./75fc1cc6-f09f-4762-b02a-699bbe2939ab/Notes.md
./5ecb1a7c-ba7d-5fa6-8921-4cfbcd35034a/Notes.md

Into:

Christina_of_Sweden.md
Chronometer.md
Chronophotographic_gun.md
Churchill,_Winston.md
Cinema.md

⚠️ Tested only once. On Linux.

Unsure it Obsidian will screw things up for The Brain, but in theory editing files in Obsidian should make The Brain Desktop application pick it up.

Example result

From our The Brain:

PS. Showing James Burke's Knowledge Web.

Potential next steps

• Obsidian plugin to handle brain:// links as internal links (or a custom application to redirect brain:// links to Obsidian).
• Plugin(?) to read links from Brain.db & show in Obsidian?
• And more...

obsidian-link.sh

#!/bin/bash

# Usage example (on linux):
# mkdir ~/Brain-vault
# ./obsidian-link.sh ~/Brain/B02 ~/Brain-vault

# Get the source directory as the first argument or default to current directory
source_dir="${1:-.}"  # Convert to absolute path
source_dir=`realpath "${source_dir}"`
# Get the destination directory as the second argument or default to ~/Brain-vault
destination_dir="${2:-~/Brain-vault}"

# Expand the tilde to the user's home directory
destination_dir="${destination_dir/#\~/$HOME}"

# Default SQLite3 database file
brain_db="Brain.db"

# Check if THOUGHTS_JSON environment variable is set
if [ -n "$THOUGHTS_JSON" ] && [ -f "$THOUGHTS_JSON" ]; then
    thoughts_source="$THOUGHTS_JSON"
else
    thoughts_source="$source_dir/$brain_db"
fi

# Loop through each UUID folder
for uuid_folder in "$source_dir"/*; do
    # Extract the UUID from the folder name
    uuid=$(basename "$uuid_folder")
    
    # Determine whether to use jq or sqlite3
    if [ "$thoughts_source" == "$source_dir/$brain_db" ]; then
        # Get the name using sqlite3
        name=$(sqlite3 "$thoughts_source" "SELECT Name FROM thoughts WHERE Id = '$uuid' AND ForgottenDateTime IS NULL;")
    else
        # Get the name using jq from the specified JSON file
        name=$(jq -r --arg uuid "$uuid" '.[] | select(.Id == $uuid) | select(.ForgottenDateTime == null) | .Name' "$thoughts_source")
    fi
    
    # If a matching name is found
    if [ -n "$name" ]; then
        # Replace spaces and forward slashes with underscores in the name
        name_sanitized="${name// /_}"
        name_sanitized="${name_sanitized//\//_}"
        
        # Full path to the Nodes.md file within the UUID folder
        nodes_md_path="$uuid_folder/Notes.md"
        
        # Path to the symbolic link in the Obsidian vault
        link_path="$destination_dir/$name_sanitized.md"
        
        # Create or update the symbolic (soft) link in the Obsidian vault
        ln -sf "$nodes_md_path" "$link_path"
    fi
done

# Remove broken symbolic links
for link in "$destination_dir"/*.md; do
    if [ -L "$link" ] && [ ! -e "$link" ]; then
        rm "$link"
    fi
done