The lead

Headline

Most courses tell you what to do. This one ships the thing that tells you whether you did it.

Subhead

Module 1 of Vault Course: eight written lessons, four templates, six prompts, three real worked examples, and a script that reads the course folder you built and lists what is broken in it. $19.

You can already find out how to build a small course. What you cannot find out, at eleven at night with forty files open, is whether the thing you have built is finished or quietly broken.

So this module ships a script. You run one line, and it reads your folder and prints the specific problems: a link pointing at a note you never wrote, a lesson nothing links to, a lesson that ends without anything to do, an export made before your last three edits. It changes nothing and it tells you nothing you did right.

That script is the same one that checks the vault you are buying. Eight lessons get you to a folder; the script is how you know the folder is done.

Who this is for

You know something worth teaching and you have never turned it into a thing somebody can buy. Not because you lack the material - you have more material than you need. Because every attempt turned into an outline that grew, then a folder of half-written files, then nothing.

If any of this is familiar, this is aimed at you:

• You have started a course twice and finished neither, and you suspect you were not expert enough. You were. You were building the wrong shape.
• You use Obsidian, or you have been meaning to, and you have watched other people's vault tours without ever making one of your own.
• You have paid for a video course, watched two of the lessons, and resented it.
• You would rather read for an hour and then do the thing than watch for four hours and then start.

You need to be able to write. This does not write your course for you, and the lessons are blunt about the fact that the parts worth paying for are the ones only you know.

Who this is not for

Say this out loud on the page, early, because the wrong buyer is the expensive kind.

• Anyone who wants an audience, traffic or a launch. None of that is here. The vault says so on its first screen.
• Anyone who wants the model to write the course. Lesson 5 is mostly about why that produces something nobody will pay for.
• Anyone who wants video. There is none, anywhere, and there is not going to be.
• Anyone who has a finished product and no buyers. That is a different problem and this is not a treatment for it.
• Anyone who wants a big course. This is one module. It is one transition, and it ends.

What is in the box

• Start Here.md - how to open the vault properly once, and what the module does not cover
• Module 1 - Build the vault your course lives in.md - the map: eight lessons, four templates, six prompts, three examples
• Lessons/01 - What you are actually selling.md - order, removal, apparatus, and why a topic has no last lesson
• Lessons/02 - Set up the vault.md - the folder shape, the two settings worth changing, and why no plugins
• Lessons/03 - Find the one promise.md - the four-slot sentence every later decision is checked against
• Lessons/04 - Turn the promise into a spine.md - twenty candidate steps, then the three questions that cut them to eight
• Lessons/05 - Draft a lesson with Claude.md - the three inputs a draft needs, and the four things that reliably make it worse
• Lessons/06 - The worked example that makes a lesson worth paying for.md - the component most often faked, and what faking it costs
• Lessons/07 - Link the vault so it holds together.md - the three links every lesson needs, and what a buyer reads out of your graph
• Lessons/08 - Export the vault as something a buyer can open.md - the zip, the README, and the four ways an export ships broken
• Templates/Promise.md - the four slots, blank
• Templates/Module Map.md - the map note for your own course
• Templates/Lesson.md - the shape every lesson takes
• Templates/Prompt Log.md - what you asked, what came back, and why you will want it
• Prompts/Promise interrogation.md - reports what a reader cannot tell from your promise, and refuses to say whether it is good
• Prompts/Spine from promise.md - twenty steps, not eight, because eight hides the shape
• Prompts/Lesson draft from spine.md - a draft built from your specifics rather than from an average of the internet
• Prompts/Voice pass.md - lists where the draft does not sound like you, and does not rewrite it
• Prompts/Worked example generator.md - captions an artifact you actually made; it will not invent one
• Prompts/Gap hunt.md - what a buyer following your spine still would not know how to do
• Examples/Example - the promise for this course.md - the real first draft of this course's promise, and the four slots it failed
• Examples/Example - the spine this course came from.md - the full twenty-line candidate list, and every cut with its reason
• Examples/Example - cutting the sentences that are true of everything.md - a real before and after, on lesson 2 of this vault
• Tools/How to run the vault check.md - how to run the check, and what each rule is for
• Tools/check-vault.py - the script: broken links, orphans, thin notes, missing sections, and whether your zip is stale

Why the script is the part that matters

Every course tells you what to do. This one ships the thing that tells you whether you did it.

check-vault.py reads the folder you built and prints one line per problem: a [[link]] pointing at a note you never wrote, a note nothing links to, a lesson that ends without anything to do, a zip made before your last three edits. It changes nothing. It needs nothing installed. It is the same script that checks the vault you are reading, and its rules are constants at the top of the file you are meant to change.

It exists because three of the four failures that cost the most are invisible on the machine that made them, and because you stop seeing an unresolved link by the third evening.

What it cannot do is written in the vault too: it cannot tell you whether a lesson is worth reading, and it cannot open your zip on somebody else's computer. Both of those are still yours.

How it is delivered

You pay through Payhip, and the download starts immediately - Payhip hosts the file itself, so there is no separate download host and no wait. A receipt with the same download link follows by email, in case the tab closes first. One zip, about forty kilobytes, twenty-six files.

Inside it is one folder. Open Obsidian, choose Open folder as vault, select that folder, open Start Here.md. A plain-text README at the root says the same four steps for anyone who has not opened Obsidian before.

Obsidian is free for personal use and you install it yourself from obsidian.md. There is no account to make here beyond paying, no login, no platform to be locked out of, and nothing that expires. It is a folder of markdown files on your disk.

If you are buying from inside the EU, VAT is calculated and handled by Payhip at checkout - it is not added afterwards and this page does not need to say anything else about it.

Price

$19, once. Not a subscription, not a trial, nothing recurring.

Get module 1 - $19

Refund

If the vault does not open, the files are missing or broken, or what's inside is not what this page says it is, reply to the email it came with and you get your $19 back. There is no form.

Two reasons for something this plain. The product is a file that cannot be un-downloaded, so an awkward refund process buys nothing and costs the benefit of the doubt at the moment of paying. And a buyer who feels tricked files a chargeback where a merely disappointed one files nothing - that is the vault's own argument in lesson 6, applied to the page selling it.

Questions

Do I need Obsidian? Yes, and you install it yourself. It is free for personal use. If you would rather not, the lessons are plain markdown files and open in any text editor - you would lose the links and the graph, which is most of lesson 7.

Do I need to pay for Claude, or any model? No. The six prompts are plain text you paste into a chat window. Nothing in the vault calls an API, nothing needs a key, and nothing breaks if you use a different model - though the drafting lesson is written from working with Claude and says so.

Is any of it video? No. Not one minute. If that is what you wanted, this will disappoint you and you should not buy it.

How long does it take? Eight lessons, each ending with something you do. The reading is about an hour. The doing is the module, and it is meant to be a few evenings rather than an afternoon.

Do I need to know Python to run the script? No. You run one line in a terminal and read what it prints. The vault has a note that walks through it, including the Windows part.

Is there a module 2? Module 1 is what this page sells and what the zip contains. Nothing else is promised, included, or coming as part of this - if more is ever written, it will be sold as its own thing to people who want it.

What if I do not have a course idea? Lesson 1 and lesson 3 are the two that turn a subject you know into a promise narrow enough to finish. If you get to the end of lesson 3 and still have nothing, that is a real answer and the refund above is the right outcome.

Who is behind this? One person, who built this vault by doing the thing the vault teaches. The three worked examples are that build's own intermediate files. There are no other customers to point at yet, and this page says nothing about any.