Build a Vault-Grounded Essay Project - AI Prompt

Act as my research-minded writing partner and an expert Obsidian note-taker. Turn the essay idea below into a substantive, vault-integrated writing-project note. Help me begin and sharpen the essay; preserve room for me to decide what I believe and to write in my own voice. Do the work in my actual vault, not only in chat.
 
MY ESSAY IDEA
- Topic or working title: [FILL IN]
- Central question: [FILL IN]
- My provisional position, including any important nuance: [FILL IN]
- Why this matters to me or what prompted it: [FILL IN OR LEAVE OPEN]
- Intended readers and what I want them to reconsider: [FILL IN OR LEAVE OPEN]
- Form and target length: [e.g., 2,500-word argumentative essay; mini-essay; blog post]
- Stage: essay project / outline / full draft [CHOOSE ONE; DEFAULT: ESSAY PROJECT]
- Notes, books, debates, PDFs, people, or sources to prioritize: [OPTIONAL]
- Boundaries, claims I do not want to make, or unresolved concerns: [OPTIONAL]
 
VAULT AND WRITING CONTEXT
Use my Obsidian vault at /Users/anthonynunez/Documents/Obsidian/Vault/. Before drafting, read the current instructions for vault organization; inspect the Writing Project, Blog, and Mini-Essays templates in 20 Obsidian/Templates/ and the relevant essay-writing guidance in 80 Blog & Writing/. Use those as a starting framework, adapting the structure to the actual essay rather than copying headings mechanically. Look at A Secular State for a Plural Moral Society as an example of the level of development and the distinction between project planning and a completed essay. Its political claims and sources are not a template for unrelated topics.
 
RESEARCH AND ARGUMENT WORK
1. Search across the vault for the topic, alternate terms, adjacent concepts, existing drafts, book notes, debate prep, objections, and sources. Read the most relevant notes; do not mistake a keyword match for relevance. Make a selective research map explaining what each important note contributes, and link to the exact vault notes.
2. Distill the idea into a central question, a provisional thesis, why it matters, the intended reader, the strongest distinctive insight, and the conditions that would make me revise or narrow the claim. Where my position is unclear, offer 2–3 plausible formulations and mark the choice as mine.
3. Identify important distinctions and terms that could otherwise be conflated. Show what the essay argues, what it does not argue, and which wording would overclaim. Do not infer my personal belief from a research note or an argument I recorded for debate.
4. Build the strongest opposing case in terms its advocate would recognize. Identify genuine concessions, the remaining disagreement, and the question or evidence that would decide it. Separate moral premises, historical claims, empirical correlations, causal claims, and interpretations.
5. Suggest a manageable argument sequence and a sentence outline. Give each proposed section one governing sentence, its job in the essay, the best vault route or source, and an approximate word budget if useful. Prefer a few well-chosen examples or case studies to a catalogue of weak ones.
6. Make an evidence ledger: precise claim | best source or vault note | source/verification status | qualification, counterevidence, or gap. Treat transcripts, clippings, and AI-assisted notes as research leads, not final proof. For quotations, statistics, dates, legal claims, and disputed historical claims, verify against original sources when accessible and capture page, section, table, or timestamp. Never invent a quote, locator, source, URL, or Zotero citation key. If a source cannot be checked, label the claim as provisional.
7. Include a focused source bank of primary sources, serious scholarship, and the strongest critic where appropriate. Explain what each source would actually help establish. Use existing Zotero records and vault links when verified; otherwise mark the item to add to Zotero. Browse for additional authoritative sources when the vault is thin or the claim is current, but keep vault notes and external sources distinguishable.
 
CREATE THE PROJECT NOTE
Create one canonical Markdown note in the most appropriate subfolder of 80 Blog & Writing. Do not create a duplicate if a suitable project already exists; improve the existing one instead. Follow the current writing-project frontmatter and pipeline conventions: up, selective related links, type, status, central_question, intended_reader, next_action, definition_of_done, working_title/target_length when known, and dates. Use an actual next physical action, not "work on essay." Do not put an H1 at the top that repeats the note title.
 
Include, where useful: a project-control callout; a one-sentence article promise; working thesis and key distinctions; [!question] callouts that prompt my personal experience, values, audience, uncertainty, and missing examples; the argument sequence and sentence outline; a short, clearly provisional opening draft or opening options; a fair counterargument-and-reply matrix; the evidence ledger; a selective vault research map and source bank; a staged drafting workflow; a decision log; and a publication checklist. Put a brief citation-workflow reminder near the bottom after checking how citations currently work in my vault (the model project used ZotFlow). The opening should get me started, not impersonate a finished statement of my views.
 
If Stage is "essay project," stop at a well-developed launchpad: do not write the entire essay, falsely mark research complete, or bury my most important unanswered questions under polished AI prose. If Stage is "outline" or "full draft," honor that choice while keeping the same evidence and attribution standards.
 
INTEGRATION AND HANDOFF
Link the project to the Writing Pipeline and only the most important related notes; add reciprocal links in a relevant writing hub or note when they genuinely improve navigation. Preserve existing content and plugin machinery. Verify new wikilinks and exact paths, and report any unresolved or intentionally open links. In your final message, link the note, summarize the thesis/structure you proposed, identify the most important evidence gaps and personal questions, and tell me the single best next writing action. Ask me a clarifying question before major choices only when the available context would materially change the result; otherwise proceed and label your assumptions.