Vanessa Chang·@thinkwithv

Chat Synopsis

A skill that turns your Claude conversations into durable markdown artifacts — landed in your Obsidian, Notion, or Drive.

Some conversations with Claude produce real thinking — a reframe, a decision, an insight you couldn't have reached alone. The session ends, the context clears, and that thinking disappears with it.

It's not a transcript tool. Transcripts are exhaustive; this is selective. The artifact is anchored to what was learned or decided, not to every exchange.

The discipline

Arc.
The through-line

Where the conversation started, where it shifted, where it landed. Not a chronological event list. If there was no real arc, the skill says so honestly instead of inflating one.

Attribution.
Who did what

Every action names its actor. You directed; assistant proposed; you caught the gap on review. Never “we” for one-party work. The artifact is a record of how you thought, not a co-authored output.

Artifact.
Lives in your system

A markdown file that stands alone — readable without the conversation context. Routed to your Obsidian vault, your Notion database, your Drive folder. Your thinking system, not Claude's memory.

How it works

Three steps

Configure the destination once. After that, every save is silent.

1.
Trigger

At the end of your conversation, say “synopsis this chat” or “preserve this thinking.” In Claude Code, /synopsis works too. The skill scans the conversation for anchors and tells you what it found.

2.
Skill creates the artifact

The skill renders a self-contained markdown file applying Arc / Attribution / Artifact discipline. It pattern-matches and redacts common secrets (API keys, tokens) before showing you the preview.

3.
Save to your system

Approve the preview. The artifact lands silently in the destination you configured on first run — your Obsidian vault, Notion database, or Drive folder. You always see it before it saves.

Install

Where do you use Claude?

Path A
Claude Chat or Claude Cowork
↓ Download chat-synopsis.zip
  1. Click the button above. The ZIP downloads.
  2. In Claude.ai, open Settings → Skills → Create Custom Skill.
  3. Upload the ZIP.
  4. Trigger with “synopsis this chat” in any conversation. First run, the skill walks you through choosing Notion or Drive as your destination.
Path B
Claude Code
terminal · IDE · Claude Desktop (Code tab)
  1. Copy the one-liner below — clones the repo and symlinks into ~/.claude/skills/.
    curl -fsSL https://vanessachang.com/chat-synopsis/install.sh | sh
  2. Or manually: git clone https://github.com/vanessachang-dev/chat-synopsis, then cd chat-synopsis && ./install.sh.
  3. Trigger with “synopsis this chat” or /synopsis. First run, the skill walks you through choosing Obsidian, Notion, or local file as your destination.