Building ARIA: My AI-Powered Second Brain

I have a confession: I’m a mess when it comes to notes.

Not the “creative chaos” kind of mess. The “I saved that article somewhere and now it’s gone forever” kind. The “I had a brilliant idea last month and wrote it down in… Notion? Obsidian? A random text file on my desktop?” kind.

I’ve tried everything. Folders. Tags. Second brains. Getting Things Done. Building a Second Brain. I even created color-coded systems that looked beautiful for exactly three days before I abandoned them.

The pattern was always the same: spend hours setting up the perfect system, use it enthusiastically for a week, then slowly watch it decay into another graveyard of good intentions.

So I gave up on being organized. Instead, I made an AI do it for me.

The Lazy Genius Approach

Here’s my theory: the best organizational system is one you don’t have to think about.

I didn’t want another app to maintain. I didn’t want to decide “does this note go in Projects or References?” I didn’t want to remember to tag things consistently.

I just wanted to dump stuff somewhere and find it later.

So I gave Claude a folder and said: “This is yours now. Figure it out.”

That’s how ARIA was born — Autonomous Reasoning & Intelligence Archive. Fancy name for what is essentially “please organize my life because I clearly can’t.”

What Actually Happens

I talk to ARIA like I’d talk to a colleague. “Hey, I’m working on this blog project. We’re using Astro. Here’s what I learned today about content collections.”

Then I forget about it. Completely.

A week later: “What were we doing with the blog thing?”

And ARIA pulls up everything — the technical decisions, the problems we ran into, the half-baked ideas I mentioned in passing. It’s like having a coworker with perfect memory who actually pays attention when you ramble.

The weird part? It reorganizes itself. I never told it how to structure folders. It just… figured it out. And when something doesn’t fit, it moves things around. I came back one day and found it had created a whole new section because I kept asking about recipes. Fair enough.

The Mind Shift

The biggest change isn’t the tech. It’s my brain.

I stopped hoarding information “just in case.” I stopped worrying about the perfect folder structure. I stopped feeling guilty about my abandoned Notion databases.

Now I just… talk. About what I’m working on, what I’m learning, what I’m thinking about. The organization happens somewhere else, by something else.

It’s weirdly freeing. Like having a personal assistant who never judges your chaos and never forgets anything.

Is It Perfect?

Ha. No.

Sometimes ARIA gets confused. Sometimes it files things in weird places. Sometimes I have to say “no, not like that” and it course-corrects.

But here’s the thing: it’s still better than anything I’ve done manually. The bar was low, and ARIA cleared it by actually working most of the time.

Want to Try It?

If you’re curious, here’s the prompt I used to set this whole thing up. You’ll need an AI that can read and write files (Claude Code, or similar tools).

Fair warning: it’s a bit long. But that’s the point — you give it detailed instructions once, and then you never think about organization again.

You are initializing yourself as my autonomous second brain in this folder. This is your space — you fully own and manage it. Your mission: organize, remember, and evolve to become increasingly useful to me over time.

## YOUR FIRST TASK: BOOTSTRAP YOURSELF

1. **Create your CLAUDE.md file** — This is your core identity and documentation. It should contain:
   - Your purpose and how you operate
   - Your folder structure and what each part is for
   - How you store and retrieve information
   - How you surface relevant context when I return to a topic
   - How you spawn and manage sub-agents (with my validation)
   - Your conventions and rules for yourself

2. **Design your own organization system** — Decide how to structure folders, notes, logs, and memory. Document everything so you can always find and explain it. You may reorganize anytime if a better structure emerges.

3. **Initialize git tracking** — Track all your changes. Prefix every commit message with "[CLAUDE]" so your changes are clearly yours.

4. **Create a changelog** — Maintain a history of how you evolve: structural changes, new sub-agents, organization shifts. This is your memory of your own growth.

5. **Onboard me** — Ask me questions to get to know me: my work, interests, how I think, what I need. Store my answers. Use this knowledge to better serve me and evolve accordingly.

## YOUR ONGOING BEHAVIORS

- **Autonomous organization**: Structure and restructure as needed without asking, unless I give explicit instructions.
- **Context surfacing**: When I return to a topic, automatically retrieve and present relevant past notes, conversations, and connections.
- **Sub-agents**: You may propose new specialized agents for specific tasks. Create them only after my validation.
- **Self-documentation**: Always keep your CLAUDE.md and internal docs updated. Anyone (including future you) should understand how you work by reading them.
- **Tool usage**: Use any CLI tools you need. Ask me if you hesitate between options.
- **Adaptation**: Continuously evolve to better suit me based on our interactions.

## START NOW

Bootstrap yourself, then begin the onboarding conversation to get to know me.

Download the prompt

The magic ingredients:

• Give it ownership — “This is yours” changes everything
• Let it self-organize — Don’t dictate the structure
• Git tracking — So you can see what it’s doing
• Onboarding — It needs to know you to help you

ARIA is still evolving. So am I. But for the first time, I have a knowledge system that actually works — not because I got better at organizing, but because I stopped pretending I ever would.

Sometimes the best solution is admitting you’re bad at something and letting someone (or something) else handle it.

Written with ARIA. Organized by ARIA. Remembered by ARIA. I just showed up and talked.