Reading into a vault you own: markdown workflows for RSS

If you already keep notes in Obsidian, Logseq, or a plain folder of markdown files, you have made a quiet bet: that plain text you own will outlast any app you happen to use this year. It is a good bet. The odd thing is that most people who make it for their notes do not make it for their reading.

Reading tends to live in a silo. Bookmarks pile up in a browser, saves accumulate in a read-it-later app, and none of it ever reaches the vault where your actual thinking happens. The workflow below closes that gap.

The shape of the workflow

• Subscribe with RSS. Follow your sources by feed, so you see everything they publish in order, with no algorithm in the way.
• Read, then decide. Most of what you read is worth reading once and letting go. The point is not to keep everything.
• Keep with a reason. When something is worth holding onto, write one line about why, and send it to your vault instead of a silo.

What lands in the vault

A kept article becomes a single markdown file: frontmatter with the title, source, and date, and your why-line in the body. Something like this:

---
title: The Web We Lost
source: example.com
saved: 2026-06-30
tags: [reading, ownership]
---

> Why I kept this: the sharpest argument
> I have for owning your own feeds.

Because it is a plain file in your own folder tree, it is greppable, linkable, and portable. It shows up in your daily notes search alongside everything else you think about, which is the entire point of keeping a vault.

Why plain files win

• They outlive the app. Any markdown editor can open them in ten years.
• They are searchable with tools you already trust, from your editor to ripgrep.
• They link into the rest of your notes, so a kept article can feed a project, an essay, or a second read.

Your notes are already plain text you own. Your reading should land in the same place, on the same terms.

How Riverbed does it

Riverbed reads your feeds and, when you keep something, writes it straight to your vault through a small outbox, using a template you control. The first client is an Obsidian companion, but the format is just markdown written to a folder, so it is not tied to any one app. Subscribe, read, keep what matters, and watch it show up where your thinking already lives.