Tutorial 5: Start an Accessible Vault

Goal: a working linked-notes vault — backlinks, tags, daily notes, and sync — from an empty folder, in twenty minutes.

A vault is just a folder of Markdown files. QUILL adds an index (a small cache you can delete without losing a word), and every "graph" question gets a spoken answer instead of a picture.

1. Create and open the vault

Make a folder, e.g. Documents\Notes.
Tools > Vault > Open Vault... and pick it. QUILL indexes it and announces: "Vault Notes: 0 notes, 0 links."

2. The first triangle

Create Projects.md, write a line, and save it into the vault folder.
Create QUILL.md and inside it type: Part of my [[Projects]] work.
Create Podcast.md and type: A [[Projects]] idea that uses [[QUILL]].
In Podcast.md, put the caret on [[QUILL]] and run Follow Wikilink — you land in QUILL.md.
Now the magic: in Projects.md, run Show Backlinks. QUILL answers "2 notes link here" and reads each link with the sentence it lives in. Enter opens the source at the mention.

That is the graph view, spoken.

3. Daily habits

Complete Link or Tag at Cursor finishes a half-typed [[note or #tag from a spoken, filtered list.
Go to Note is a type-to-filter switcher; Search Vault searches every note (regex and whole-word supported) and opens hits at their line.
Add #project/quill style tags anywhere; Show Tags rolls nested tags up (#project finds #project/quill).
Open Today's Note starts a dated journal entry; Previous/Next Daily Note page through your journal.
Insert Template fills {{date}}/{{title}}, asks any {{prompt}}, and drops the caret at {{cursor}}. Configure the Templates folder in Vault Settings.

4. Growing safely

A [[link]] to a note that does not exist offers to create it; an ambiguous name gets a spoken chooser, never a guess.
Rename Note updates the file, the H1, and every inbound link.
Unlinked Mentions finds where you wrote a note's name without linking it — stitch the web tighter.
Note Neighborhood lists everything one hop away, both directions.

Export Vault as Website writes a small accessible site — one page per note, links and embeds resolved — ready to host anywhere.
Sync Vault commits, pulls, and pushes over your own Git remote, and lists conflicts for you to decide instead of overwriting.

6. Ideas that stick

Research: one note per source, links to topic notes; backlinks answer "which sources discuss this?"
Fiction: a note per character and place; from a character note, backlinks list every scene that mentions them (pairs beautifully with Story Studio).
Work journal: daily notes + tags; the Friday report is one vault search away.

Start smaller than feels sensible. Ten notes and honest links beat a taxonomy you will never finish.