Johnny.Decimal skills

Notice: Claude wrote some of this.

Skills that let an AI agent work with your Johnny.Decimal system. Read and write your JDex, find your files, and keep your notes up to date.

Install

npx skills add johnnydecimal/skills

Or copy the folders in skills/ into your agent's skills directory yourself. For Claude Code that is ~/.claude/skills/ for every project, or .claude/skills/ for one.

What you get

jdex

Reads and writes your JDex, your Johnny.Decimal index. Ask it to find a file, look up an ID, trace how something works, or write a note. Invoke it by mentioning your JDex, for example "read my jdex and catch up".

johnnydecimal

Reference material on how Johnny.Decimal works. You do not invoke this one. The jdex skill loads it when it needs it.

Before you start

1. Tell the skills where your system is

Create ~/.jd/config.json:

{
  "version": 1,
  "systems": [
    { "root": "/path/to/your/filesystem", "jdex": "/path/to/your/jdex" }
  ]
}

• root is your Johnny.Decimal filesystem.
• jdex is your index, for example your Obsidian vault.
• With more than one system, mark the usual one "default": true, and give each a "sys" — its system identifier, the SYS in SYS.AC.ID.

If you skip this, the skill offers to find your locations and write the file for you.

2. Connect the MCP server

The skills get their Johnny.Decimal knowledge from the MCP server rather than carrying a copy, so they stay current.

claude mcp add --transport http jd https://johnnydecimal.com/mcp

Sign in when prompted. The documentation tools work with any account. The tools that serve a published system need an account that owns that system.

Which ID am I working on?

jdex works on one ID at a time. It finds that ID in this order:

1. A .jd/config.json in the current folder, or the nearest one above it:

   { "id": "12.34" }

   Add "sys" when you run more than one system.
2. An ID in brackets in the folder name, for example my-project [12.34].
3. It asks you.

It will not guess, and it will not go looking through your JDex for a match.

Two files called config.json

They answer different questions. Tell them apart by their keys.

File	Question	Key
~/.jd/config.json	Which systems do I have, and where?	systems
./.jd/config.json	Which ID is this folder about?	id

Neither overrides the other.

Licence

Use these however you like.