Three pieces, one workflow.

Each piece does one thing. They wire together with MCP — Claude's plugin protocol — so Claude Desktop can read your notes and run local models without any of it leaving your machine.

Pick your platform.

The installer ships as one file per OS. Click your platform — the next slide will show the right download.

Download. Double-click.

Grab the installer file from the GitHub repo. It expects to live next to the vault-template/ folder.

curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Coherence-Daddy/use-ollama-to-enhance-claude/main/install.command
chmod +x install.command
open install.command

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Coherence-Daddy/use-ollama-to-enhance-claude/main/install.bat" -OutFile install.bat
.\install.bat

curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Coherence-Daddy/use-ollama-to-enhance-claude/main/install.sh
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

A terminal window will open with a coral banner and step-by-step progress. Total time: 3–8 minutes (most of it pulling the local models).

What the installer does (so you trust it).

1. Checks dependencies. Installs Homebrew (mac) / uses winget (Windows) / detects apt-dnf-pacman (Linux). Adds Claude Desktop, Obsidian, and Ollama if missing.
2. Pulls local models. llama3.1 for chat, nomic-embed-text for embeddings. ~5 GB combined; cached after this.
3. Asks where to put the vault. Defaults to ~/Documents/Obsidian Vault/Brain/. Confirms before overwriting.
4. Copies the vault template. 🏠 Welcome.md, Tools/, Projects/, _Claude_Ollama_Human/, plus pre-configured plugins and the coral-dark CSS snippet.
5. Wires Claude Desktop. Writes claude_desktop_config.json with the MCP filesystem server pointed at your vault. Backs up any existing config first.
6. Opens Obsidian and Claude Desktop. Both apps launch on the new vault. Done.

First open: try it in 30 seconds.

1. Obsidian opens on your new vault.You'll land on 🏠 Welcome.
2. Click into Tools/🔍 Ask Brain.Follow the one-line instruction at the top.
3. Switch to Claude Desktop.Ask: "What's in my Brain vault?"
4. Watch Claude list your folders and files.If it does, MCP is wired correctly. You're done with Path A — skip to slide 14.

Install three apps.

If you already have one or two of these, skip those.

npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

Pick your model strategy — Cloud (recommended) or Local.

Same Ollama tooling, two ways to run the actual brains. Ollama Cloud runs much higher-quality models on Ollama's hardware (free tier — Gemma, GLM, Kimi, Qwen3-Coder). Local keeps everything on your laptop. Most people should start with Cloud and only flip to Local if total privacy matters more than answer quality.

ollama pull gemma4:31b-cloud
ollama pull glm-5.1:cloud
ollama pull kimi-k2.6:cloud
ollama pull qwen3-coder-next

ollama pull llama3.1            # chat / reasoning (~4.7 GB)
ollama pull nomic-embed-text    # embeddings (~274 MB)

Verify either path with ollama list. The 🤖 Models button in your vault flips between them on the fly — no reinstall needed.

Create the vault structure.

A clean starter shape that scales. Every folder has one job.

Install community plugins.

Settings → Community plugins → Browse. Search and install each:

Wire Claude Desktop to your vault.

Edit claude_desktop_config.json — Claude looks for it in a per-OS location.

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
        "/absolute/path/to/your/Brain"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart and verify.

1. Quit Claude Desktop fully.Cmd+Q on mac, Alt+F4 on Windows. MCP servers only load at cold start.
2. Reopen Claude Desktop.Watch the bottom-right for an MCP indicator (a small plug icon when servers connect).
3. Ask: "What's in my Brain vault?"Claude should list the top-level folders.
4. Ask: "Read 🏠 Welcome.md and summarize it."If you get a real summary, MCP filesystem is wired.

The daily loop.

Don't change how you write notes. The brain works better the more you use Obsidian normally.

1. Capture.New note in Obsidian. Frontmatter is optional. Don't pre-organize.
2. Sync.Run /sync from Tools (or let it auto-run periodically). This re-embeds new notes into the local Qdrant vector store.
3. Ask.Open Claude Desktop. Ask in plain English. "What did I figure out about the auth migration?" Claude searches by meaning, not keywords.
4. Refine.Claude's answer cites the notes it pulled from. Click through, edit, re-sync.

Importing a project: source stays where it lives.

When you import a repo, the brain reads it and writes a summary. Code never moves into Obsidian.

Lite vs. Full — pick how deep you want to go.

Steps 1–14 give you the Lite brain: Claude Desktop reads your vault as plain files. Good for most people. If you want a real semantic brain — searches by meaning, callable from Claude Code with one keystroke, with one-click sidebar buttons in Obsidian — say "yes" at Step 5 of the installer.

What Full adds — eight buttons, seven commands, one MCP.

The Full installer drops a ~/local-brain/ folder containing every piece of the system. None of it leaves your machine.

• 📋 Open Dashboard · 🔍 Ask Brain · 🔄 Sync Brain — the everyday loop.
• 📥 Intake · 📂 Import — start a new project, or teach the brain about an existing folder. Both ask which vault to write into.
• 🤖 Models — toggle between Anthropic (Claude) and Ollama for the engine the buttons use.
• 📐 View Mermaid · 🎨 View Excalidraw — open any project's infrastructure.md as a clean schematic, or convert it to a hand-editable Excalidraw canvas.
• Slash commands — /ask, /sync, /intake, /import, /dashboard, /status, /diagram drop into ~/.claude/commands/ automatically.
• FastMCP server — local-brain registers with Claude Code so any session can call brain_search, brain_status, brain_list_projects on its own. Claude reaches for the brain when it would help; you don't have to ask.

Plain-English flowcharts of every button live at walkthroughs/index.html in the repo.