Claude Code + Obsidian: My family’s AI brain

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

November 11, 2026

Duration

34m

Channel

How I AI

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Scott Farrar is a math educator and parent who got tired of AI chats that drift and forget. So he built a household brain in Claude Code: a folder of Markdown files, viewed in Obsidian, that knows his appliances, warranties, insurance documents, and everything on his family’s to-do list. In this episode, Scott shows how he uses it to shop for car insurance, plan repairs, share the system with his wife, and put priority tasks and recent wins on a wall display. We also talk about AI and math learning, and why he wants AI to keep kids doing the thinking. *What you’ll learn:*

1. Why he moved his home life from AI chat to Claude Code
2. What Claude told him to photograph first
3. How AI made him a sharper insurance shopper
4. The to-do file he keeps coming back to
5. How he and his wife share one household brain
6. Why his wall display has a “recent wins” section
7. How a flipped tutor gets kids to teach the AI

*Brought to you by:* WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more: https://workos.com?utm_source=lennys_howiai&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=q22025 Jira Product Discovery—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence: https://atlassian.com/howiai *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Teaser (02:41) The problem (and solution) (06:05) Demo: shopping for car insurance (08:05) Building a household brain (12:37) Type A vs. type B AI organization (14:40) His shared household to-do list (19:07) Household DAKboard wall display (21:36) Does it actually change behavior? (22:40) Household tasks to hand to AI (26:00) AI, kids, and student agency (31:16) When AI gets out of sync (32:49) Where to find Scott *Tools referenced:*

• Claude Code: https://www.claude.com/product/claude-code
• Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/
• GitHub: https://github.com/
• DAKboard: https://dakboard.com/

*Other references:*

• I Built My Home’s AI Assistant (Scott’s write-up): https://sfxmath.com/work/homeai-household-knowledge-base/
• Algebuds: Student Tutors Chatbot: https://sfxmath.com/work/algebuds/

*Where to find Scott Farrar:* Website: https://sfxmath.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farrarscott *Where to find Claire Vo:* ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo *Have a really cool use case of how you use AI in your work? Let us know:* https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfP8wYCeDo5K0DxscDmoqgkxYY8ngA3B2anUDDvC4xadGTerg/viewform _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co._

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Claire Vo

  host

  Product leader and AI-focused creator/host of the podcast “How I AI with Claire Vo.”

• Scott Farrar

  guest

  Math teacher (sfxmath.com) who shares workflows for building a “family AI brain” using Claude Code and Obsidian.

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of How I AI, featuring Claire Vo and Scott Farrar, Claude Code + Obsidian: My family’s AI brain explores Building a shared household “AI brain” with Claude Code and Obsidian Scott Farrar describes building a household AI system in Claude Code that reads and writes local Markdown files so the AI is “grounded” in an inspectable source of truth rather than an opaque chat memory.

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