The BEST Way to Capture Into Obsidian (just got better) — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00I want to be able to take any webpage in
2. 0:01milliseconds without AI and turn it into
3. 0:04perfect distraction-free [music]
4. 0:05plain text ready to drop into Obsidian
5. 0:08or anywhere else I need it. That's
6. 0:10Obsidian Web Clipper and in this video
7. 0:12I'll show you my exact workflow, what
8. 0:14I'm capturing, how it lands in Obsidian,
9. 0:17[music] and how to set up every detail
10. 0:18so that you can actually make use of it
11. 0:20later. I'm Nick Milo and I'm here to
12. 0:22help you build an idea verse, a home for
13. 0:24your best thinking. So let's look at a
14. 0:26page I want to save. Watch what happens
15. 0:28when I click the web extension up here.
16. 0:30Look at that. Instantly it's translated
17. 0:32the page into clean markdown and even
18. 0:34populated metadata, things like the
19. 0:36title, who it's by, the source, the
20. 0:38published date, and the description. And
21. 0:40if I click the book icon here, I get a
22. 0:42clean preview that I can read right
23. 0:44away. No ads, no navigation bars, cookie
24. 0:46banners, just the actual article. And if
25. 0:49I just hit add to Obsidian here,
26. 0:52done. It's immediately in my Obsidian
27. 0:54vault. Here's what it looks like. Look
28. 0:56at how clean this is. The title is
29. 0:58there, who it's by, the published date,
30. 1:00the source, the full article in
31. 1:02beautiful readable markdown. [music]
32. 1:03This is exactly how I want text in my
33. 1:06idea verse without ads and all sorts of
34. 1:08distractions. And again, before I even
35. 1:10clip it, sometimes I just want to read
36. 1:11it. So I'll enter reader mode, just use
37. 1:13the built-in hotkey, which is on Mac
38. 1:15option shift R, and I can just toggle
39. 1:17right in and out. Look at that, back and
40. 1:19forth, back and [music] forth. That is
41. 1:21pretty cool. Whenever I find something I
42. 1:23want to read and I'm tired of ads just
43. 1:25like this one that popped up, guess what
44. 1:27I can do? Immediately hit that's pretty
45. 1:28cool, right? The reader alone replaces a
46. 1:31lot of what people use Instapaper or
47. 1:33other read-it-later apps for. But the
48. 1:35difference here is that this is free,
49. 1:36it's open source, and nothing leaves
50. 1:38your machine. So how do you set up the
51. 1:40web clipper? It's a browser extension,
52. 1:42so it works in all the major browsers.
53. 1:43I'm using Chrome here, you can also use
54. 1:45something like the Arc browser, you can
55. 1:47also use Firefox. I find that Firefox is
56. 1:49always a few steps behind what's
57. 1:51possible in Chrome. All you need [music]
58. 1:52to do is search for the Obsidian Web
59. 1:55Clipper in your browser's extension
60. 1:57store. And this is all happening locally
61. 1:59on your machine, no cloud processing. So
62. 2:01when I clip something, it goes into
63. 2:03Atlas, then sources, then clippings.
64. 2:06That's its home. It never moves, I never
65. 2:09have to sort it or file it or think
66. 2:11about where it should go. It just lands
67. 2:12there. And I have a clippings collection
68. 2:14note that links every single clip sorted
69. 2:17from newest to oldest. So whenever I
70. 2:19want to see what I've been saving, I
71. 2:21just go here and I can see everything in
72. 2:23the best order, reverse chronological
73. 2:24order. That means that the most recent
74. 2:27thing I captured is always at the top.
75. 2:29And if you just want to copy this to
76. 2:30your clipboard or save it to a file
77. 2:32instead of Obsidian, that's right there
78. 2:34next to the add to Obsidian button. Just
79. 2:36click on this little arrow. In fact, and
80. 2:38this is really cool, you can actually
81. 2:39use this functionality completely
82. 2:41independently of this extension of the
83. 2:44web clipper. The creator of this
84. 2:45extension, Kapano, actually built a
85. 2:47standalone website for it called
86. 2:49Defuddle. So all you need to do is add
87. 2:52defuddle.md
88. 2:53>> [music]
89. 2:53>> before any URL. So look at this, I put
90. 2:56my cursor at the front and I have a
91. 2:58hotkey for it, defuddle.md. Now let me
92. 3:00hit enter.
93. 3:02Whoa.
94. 3:04Clean text with metadata at the top.
95. 3:07This is truly a gift to humanity. I know
96. 3:10that is kind of hyperbole, but when you
97. 3:12think about how much we're bombarded by
98. 3:15ads and all this content and everything,
99. 3:17this is such a gift to be able to have
100. 3:20the text, the information that we
101. 3:22actually want and nothing else. And if
102. 3:24you're working with AI, this is crucial
103. 3:27because AI reads clean plain text
104. 3:29dramatically better than a screenshot or
105. 3:32a messy copy and paste from a webpage.
106. 3:34This is the cleanest possible way to
107. 3:36hand a webpage to a language model. And
108. 3:38again, it's totally open source and can
109. 3:40be built [music] into any other
110. 3:41workflow. Now let me show you a few more
111. 3:43things you can capture because this is
112. 3:45where it gets fun. Twitter X posts, blog
113. 3:47posts, recipe pages which are
114. 3:49notoriously aggressively cluttered,
115. 3:51Insta cleaned, tech docs, help pages,
116. 3:54and then YouTube. So on any webpage,
117. 3:57same idea, if you click into reader mode
118. 3:59or use that hotkey, option shift R,
119. 4:03immediately I can watch the Cosmos
120. 4:05episode here and as it's happening, I
121. 4:08can auto scroll through. And what's so
122. 4:10cool, I can scrub
123. 4:13through the text here.
124. 4:16Just by clicking, dragging, and holding
125. 4:18on the timeline on the left. I love
126. 4:20that. [music] It reminds me of my
127. 4:21editing days working on Better Call Saul
128. 4:23and Avid Media Composer. If we look at
129. 4:25what's happening here, as Carl Sagan is
130. 4:27talking, we're seeing line by line where
131. 4:31he's at in the script. So we can both
132. 4:33see him and watch him, but we can also
133. 4:35read the text at the same time. Multiple
134. 4:37ways to learn, to interact, to take in
135. 4:39the information that might matter to us.
136. 4:41Additionally, [music]
137. 4:42we can click on something. So how about
138. 4:45the surface of the Earth is the shore of
139. 4:47the cosmic ocean? So I select that,
140. 4:51click highlight, and boom, it's
141. 4:53highlighted. Now what's so cool about
142. 4:54this is if we go back up to the web
143. 4:56clipper, I can go to the highlights and
144. 4:58just save what I've highlighted. And if
145. 5:00you go into the settings, you can switch
146. 5:01what is being highlighted. So right now
147. 5:03I have replace page content, but if you
148. 5:06want to keep the whole [music] text as
149. 5:08well, you can say highlight the page
150. 5:10content. Now if we go back to Cosmos,
151. 5:12let's try that one again, and if we go
152. 5:14to highlights, now we'll have the whole
153. 5:18transcript here. And if we scroll down
154. 5:20to that section where I highlighted, and
155. 5:22we can see it's right here and this is
156. 5:24telling me that it's highlighted. That
157. 5:26means that when I click add to Obsidian,
158. 5:29which is blowing my mind that I have the
159. 5:31whole Cosmos episode, almost 6,000
160. 5:33words,
161. 5:34>> [music]
162. 5:34>> in my Obsidian vault. We can go to 5
163. 5:38minutes in and see exactly what I
164. 5:40highlighted. Pretty sweet, right? But as
165. 5:42I'm looking at the Cosmos version, this
166. 5:44isn't the final one that I want to use.
167. 5:47What I actually want to do is go to
168. 5:50summary plus [music] highlights. So now
169. 5:52I'm incorporating AI and it's thinking,
170. 5:55it's writing a summary, and it's going
171. 5:56to add this to my idea verse. So now we
172. 5:59see this version has a summary, it has
173. 6:02headlines that I love, and then it has
174. 6:04things, the things that are mentioned in
175. 6:06the episode, people, places, numbers,
176. 6:09things, and concepts. This is amazing.
177. 6:11[music]
178. 6:12What I want to do right now is finally
179. 6:14do the thing that I've actually I've
180. 6:15wanted to do this for a couple decades
181. 6:17now, is to take all 10 episodes of
182. 6:19Cosmos, throw them into my idea verse,
183. 6:21and then just look at the things that
184. 6:24are mentioned in each episode,
185. 6:26high-level view, and then dive in as I
186. 6:28need to. And if Archimedes is mentioned
187. 6:31here, you better believe that if I hit
188. 6:33to find the rest of the article, here's
189. 6:36Archimedes at the 43-minute mark.
190. 6:38How cool is this? This is blowing my
191. 6:40mind right now. So let's try another
192. 6:42one. This one is Michael Sugrue who
193. 6:45recently passed away. He was an amazing
194. 6:47philosopher. Here he's talking about
195. 6:49Schopenhauer and we can do the same
196. 6:51thing, option shift R, and this is going
197. 6:53to take us into reader. But notice, for
198. 6:56this particular YouTube video, we now
199. 6:58see that there are timestamps. There are
200. 7:01headers essentially. So if I'm looking
201. 7:03at this, I can say Schopenhauer and then
202. 7:05I see the eight noble truths, that's
203. 7:07Buddhism. How do those two things
204. 7:09overlap? Well, I can now just click
205. 7:11straight to it. I can read through here.
206. 7:13I can see exactly what this overlap
207. 7:15might be. Very cool. If you were a
208. 7:18Tolkien fan and you're just so into Lord
209. 7:20of the Rings, you could go into this
210. 7:22channel, In Deep Geek, which is amazing.
211. 7:24Basically, [music]
212. 7:25transcribe all of the Lord of the Rings
213. 7:28video. The Lord of the Rings from
214. 7:29Sauron's perspective. Let's open this
215. 7:31bad boy up. As I'd go into reader view,
216. 7:34and again, we can see the entire
217. 7:35transcript is here.
218. 7:37And what I'll do is go ahead and just do
219. 7:41summary and highlights. I don't have any
220. 7:42highlights, it doesn't matter. It'll
221. 7:44still do the summary and the full
222. 7:46article. There it is, [music] it's done.
223. 7:48Extremely fast. Summary, headlines, and
224. 7:52things, what's actually being mentioned.
225. 7:54This is really cool. Sometimes I just
226. 7:55like to kind of it's like a form of
227. 7:57being in a dark cave and just
228. 7:59echolocation to get a a visual map, like
229. 8:02the sense of where the walls are. That's
230. 8:04what this thing section does so well for
231. 8:07me. Now this is an optional AI layer
232. 8:09built right into Web Clipper called
233. 8:11Interpreter. To set it up, go to the Web
234. 8:13Clipper settings. So if you click on the
235. 8:15Obsidian icon, it will be the gear icon
236. 8:17here. Go to Interpreter, make sure to
237. 8:20enable Interpreter, that this is toggled
238. 8:22on, and then add your provider of
239. 8:24choice. After that, you can select your
240. 8:26model below. Now Obsidian Web Clipper is
241. 8:28completely model agnostic. It doesn't
242. 8:30care what you use. You can use Claude,
243. 8:32GPT, Gemini, Deep Seek, or local models
244. 8:35through Ollama, and a lot more. If a
245. 8:37better model comes out tomorrow, you
246. 8:40just switch. So the Web Clipper template
247. 8:41that I've honed over many iterations
248. 8:44generates three distinct sections above
249. 8:46the actual article. The first is the
250. 8:48plain text summary, just a clean,
251. 8:50concise, in-summary paragraph. The
252. 8:52second are the headlines. These are the
253. 8:54top key points I need to be aware of,
254. 8:56formatted as a short bulleted list. The
255. 8:58third is an unorthodox, but
256. 9:00surprisingly, it's what I like to read
257. 9:02first. It's called things and it gives
258. 9:04me a hot list of key people, [music]
259. 9:06terms, and ideas that are mentioned in
260. 9:08the clipping. And then of course, the
261. 9:10full article content itself is just
262. 9:11below that. Now I tried just doing the
263. 9:14generic summarize this prompt for a
264. 9:16while and the problem was the results
265. 9:18were way too long or too vague or too
266. 9:21inconsistent. You'd read the summary and
267. 9:23think, why am I reading this instead of
268. 9:24just reading the article? These three
269. 9:26distinct layers let me scan the summary
270. 9:29in 5 seconds, read the headlines in 15
271. 9:31seconds, or go deeper with all the
272. 9:32things that are actually mentioned in
273. 9:34the article. Now if you want to get the
274. 9:35full guide to setting up the prompts in
275. 9:37the Interpreter, I've set up a special
276. 9:39page here and you can be processing
277. 9:41articles in minutes. Now what's great
278. 9:42about all this is that when your idea
279. 9:44verse is built on clean, well-structured
280. 9:47plain text files, you own them for a
281. 9:49lifetime. Plus, you're building a
282. 9:51foundation that any future AI model can
283. 9:53easily read. Your files remain yours and
284. 9:56they're available offline. They're ready
285. 9:58to connect to any intelligence, human or
286. 10:01artificial, whenever you're ready. And
287. 10:03this is absolutely essential if you want
288. 10:05to build your own AI assistant. If you
289. 10:08have the files, you have the core of
290. 10:10your AIOS. Then you just build a
291. 10:13playbook that teaches AI how to interact
292. 10:15with your notes. Then the AI model
293. 10:17doesn't matter anymore because you've
294. 10:19future-proofed all of your notes, and
295. 10:21that is a wonderful feeling. If you'd
296. 10:23like my exact interpreter setup, the
297. 10:25specific prompts, and how I've
298. 10:27configured this three-layer summary,
299. 10:28scan here or check out the link in the
300. 10:30description below. And for a full
301. 10:31breakdown of my AIOS, essentially how
302. 10:34I'm using Obsidian and AI together as a
303. 10:36complete system today, check out this
304. 10:39video next.