Book Capture Obsidian

Capture and normalize book metadata into Obsidian Markdown notes from photos or Goodreads CSV exports. Use for barcode and OCR ISBN extraction, metadata enrichment, idempotent note upsert, bulk migration, and dashboard generation.

Execute this workflow to add or migrate books into an Obsidian vault.

Workflow

1. Ask the user for the destination Obsidian vault path if missing.
2. Read references/configuration.md and set environment variables.
3. Choose one mode:
   • Photo ingest with scripts/ingest_photo.py
   • Goodreads CSV migration with scripts/migrate_goodreads_csv.py
4. For Goodreads migration, prefer --group-by-shelf and Google enrichment enabled.
5. Upsert notes with scripts/upsert_obsidian_note.py.
6. Refresh the dashboard with scripts/generate_dashboard.py.
7. Run validation and security checks:
   • sh scripts/run_ci_local.sh
   • sh scripts/security_scan_no_pii.sh

Required References

• references/configuration.md for runtime settings and portability
• references/data-contracts.md for normalized schema and output contracts
• references/migration-runbook.md for Goodreads import sequence
• references/troubleshooting.md for extraction and merge failures

Operating Rules

• Require explicit vault destination (BOOK_CAPTURE_VAULT_PATH or --vault-path) before bulk writes.
• Prefer barcode extraction first; use OCR as fallback.
• Keep filenames human-readable (Title - Author (Publisher, Year)).
• Keep shelf as property and include tag book in all notes.
• Use shared compact series tags (for example theexpanse, harrypotter) when volume metadata exists; avoid separate series hub notes.
• Preserve user notes section during updates.
• Keep outputs deterministic and idempotent for repeated runs.
• Do not store secrets or personal identifiers in generated artifacts.
• Simplified frontmatter: keep only title, author, publisher, year, isbn_10, isbn_13, cover, shelf, source, source_url, tags. Remove published_date, genre, status, date_started, date_read, needs_review, goodreads_book_id.