# Second brain for work: which notes are yours, and which stay when you leave

> How to set up a second brain for work: what to keep, whose notes they are, why you need two vaults, how AI fits in, and what happens to it when you leave.

Source: https://baalda.com/blog/second-brain-for-work
Site: Baalda, https://baalda.com
Published: 2026-10-30

**Short answer.** A second brain for work is the system where you keep meeting notes, decisions, project state and how-tos from your job, so you stop relying on memory. At work it should be two vaults, not one: a personal vault that leaves with you, and the team's shared vault, which stays with the team when you go.

A second brain for work is the place you keep what your job teaches you: meeting notes, decisions, project state and the how-tos you would otherwise relearn. At work it should be two vaults, not one, a personal one that leaves with you and the team's shared one that stays when you do.

Most advice on this treats a work second brain exactly like a personal one with different folders. That works until one of three things happens: a colleague needs a note that only exists on your laptop, an AI assistant at work gets pointed at everything you have ever written, or you hand in your notice. All three are the same question, which notes are yours and which belong to the people you work with, and it is much cheaper to answer it on day one than on your last day.

## What goes in a second brain for work?

The same four kinds of thing turn up in almost every job:

- **Meeting notes.** What was said, what was agreed, who owes what.
- **Decisions.** What was chosen, what was rejected and why, so the argument is not rerun in six months.
- **Project notes.** The current state of each piece of work, the open questions, the links.
- **How-tos.** The steps for the task you do twice a year and forget every time.

Then there is a fifth kind that only you need: your own log of what you shipped, notes from your one-to-ones about your growth, things you are learning, half-formed ideas you are not ready to show anyone. If you are building the habit from scratch, [how to build a second brain](/blog/how-to-build-a-second-brain) covers the method. This post is about the part the method skips, which is where each of those notes should live.

## Whose notes are they, yours or your company's?

Who legally owns notes written at work is decided by your contract and your company's policy, not by the app, so read both. In practice the notes sort themselves into three groups:

| Kind of note | Who needs it after you leave | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|
| Decisions, project notes, how-tos, meeting notes | The team | The team's shared vault |
| Your work log, growth notes, learning, rough ideas | You | A personal vault |
| Customer data, credentials, anything your policy restricts | Nobody in a notes app | The system your company approved for it |

The first row is the one that hurts when it is wrong. A decision written into your personal app is a decision the team cannot find, and when you leave it is either gone or sitting on your own disk where it does no one any good.

## Should work and personal notes share one vault?

No. Keep two. One vault means that on your last day you sit down and sort two years of notes by hand, deciding line by line what stays. Two vaults mean the sorting happened every time you wrote something, which is when you actually knew the answer.

This is the setup I use in Baalda, because a Baalda vault is just a folder of plain markdown files and the app holds several of them side by side. A new vault is local-only: it needs no account, never touches a server, and is a complete product on its own, with the editor, search, backlinks and tags. That is the personal one. The team's vault is the same kind of folder with sync and sharing turned on, which is what gives it members, per-folder access and a copy on the server.

Figure: Two vaults on one laptop: a local-only personal vault and the team's synced vault, and what each assistant and each person can reach

On disk the team vault looks like any other folder. The `.md` files are the source of truth, and the app keeps its own index and settings in a `.context` folder it never syncs:

```text
VaultRoot/
├── Notes/ … .md        # the source of truth: human, AI and git editable
├── attachments/ …      # images, PDFs, other files
└── .context/           # the app's own folder, never indexed or synced
```

Because the files are plain markdown, nothing in either vault is locked to Baalda. You can open both in any editor, and the team can read its vault without the app if it ever has to. The details of local-only against synced vaults are in [the Vaults guide](/docs/vaults).

## Can an AI assistant use your work second brain?

Yes, and this is where the two-vault split earns its keep. There are two ways an assistant reaches a Baalda vault, and they draw the line in different places.

Over MCP, which is how a cloud assistant like Claude or ChatGPT connects, a token is scoped to one person in one vault. Every call is checked against that person's access, so a folder you cannot see does not appear in a listing or a search and cannot be read or written. Your work assistant, connected to the team vault, cannot reach your personal vault at all, because the token does not name it. MCP also only works on a synced vault, so a local-only vault is out of its reach by design.

A local agent such as Claude Code or Codex works differently. It edits the files directly, and the only thing limiting it is your own filesystem permissions. Point it at the team vault's folder, not your home folder, or it will read both.

The split matters most in the other direction. When your assistant writes a meeting summary or a decision into the team vault, it lands where your colleagues can read it, rather than in a chat history only you can scroll back through. For how a team arranges those shared folders, [PARA for teams](/blog/para-method-for-teams) goes through one layout that holds.

## What happens to your work notes when you leave?

With the split above, leaving is two separate events. Your personal vault is a folder on a disk, and it goes wherever you are allowed to take it. The team vault stays with the team, complete, because it was never only on your machine.

![Members and access in Baalda's Vault Settings: the roster with each person's role, access and when they were last active](/sites/baalda/shots/shot-members.png)

In Baalda, an owner or admin removes you from the roster in Vault Settings. Remove from vault ends your membership, and your readable set empties at once rather than waiting for a token to expire. Every document you held is disconnected, and the notes you lost access to are moved to the trash on your device, not left behind as a readable copy. The server still holds the content, so this is a de-sync, not a delete: the team loses nothing. And the app refuses to trash a note whose content never reached the server, so a change of access cannot destroy work that exists nowhere else.

For the person staying, the useful part is what was already written down. A handover is easier when the decisions and how-tos have been in the team vault all along. [How to document knowledge transfer](/blog/document-knowledge-transfer) covers what to write in the last few weeks for the rest.

## Should you use Obsidian or Notion for a work second brain?

For the personal vault, Obsidian is a very good choice and often the better one. It is mature, has a huge plugin ecosystem, keeps plain markdown on your disk, and has been free for work use since its commercial licence became optional in February 2025. If you only want a personal second brain, you do not need Baalda.

For the team half, the question is what your company already runs. If everyone already writes in Notion or Confluence, the decisions belong there, in the company's workspace, and adding another tool will lose. Pages in a company workspace stay with the company, which is the right answer for the first row of the table. What you give up is files you can open without the vendor, and an assistant that writes into them under your own access.

Baalda is for the case where the team wants the shared vault to be plain markdown it owns, edited live by several people at once, with access per folder and AI reading and writing through the same permissions. It is open source under Apache-2.0, free to run locally, and can be self-hosted.

## Where this setup does not help

- **It does not decide what is yours.** Your contract and your company's policy do. Two vaults make the split easy to keep, not right by default.
- **A personal vault on a work laptop is still on the company's machine.** If the device is managed, your IT team can likely reach it. Keep truly personal notes on hardware you own.
- **Removal is not DRM.** The trash on your device is a recoverable folder, and anything copied out before you were removed is already out. It stops a stale, readable copy from lingering by accident, not a determined person.
- **It does not capture Slack or email.** Decisions made in chat still have to be written down by someone, or by an assistant you ask to do it.
- **There is no mobile app.** Baalda runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, so capture on a phone needs another tool.

## FAQ

### What is the best second brain for work?

Two vaults rather than one app. A personal vault for your own log and ideas, which Obsidian handles well, and a shared vault the team owns for decisions, project notes and how-tos. Baalda keeps both as plain markdown folders in one app, with only the team vault synced and shared.

### Should I keep work notes and personal notes separate?

Yes. Notes the team needs after you leave, such as decisions and how-tos, belong in a shared vault. Notes only you need, such as your work log and growth notes, belong in a personal one. Splitting them as you write saves sorting everything by hand on your last day.

### Who owns the notes I take at work?

Your employment contract and your company's policy decide that, not the notes app, so check both. In practice, decisions, project notes and how-tos are written for the team and should live where the team can read them after you leave.

### What happens to my work notes in Baalda when I leave the team?

An owner or admin removes you from the vault. Your access ends at once, and the team's notes on your device move to its trash rather than staying readable. The server keeps everything, so the team loses nothing, and any personal local-only vault you kept is untouched.

### Is Obsidian free for work use?

Yes. Obsidian made its commercial licence optional in February 2025, so it is free to use at work. It is a strong choice for a personal work vault. What it does not add is per-folder access for a team sharing one vault.