Reduce re-entry
Capture work details from a phone screenshot and check the extracted information before it reaches the vault.
Case study / Product design & engineering
From a screenshot
to a working system.
P12 began with a simple need: turn information captured on a phone into reliable, useful work records. It has grown through small, tested steps into a workflow connected to an Obsidian vault.
ProjectP12 / Protocol 12
RoleProduct design, workflow & development
ApproachIterative, real-world testing
The problem
Work details arrived as screenshots and had to become structured records without losing context or overwriting existing notes. Repeated manual entry made it easy for a small mismatch to travel through the rest of the workflow.
The goal was a dependable path from capture to a canonical record that could support the day’s work, reporting and calendar planning. This account omits customer names, identifiers and private operational data.
01 / The first useful slice
Capture, review, process.
01CaptureScreenshot intake on iPhone
02ReviewExtracted fields checked before use
03Validate & matchFind an existing record or identify a new one
04Merge & exportUpdate the vault safely and produce calendar data
The early workflow separated incoming material into Inbox, Processed and Failed states. Provisional identities and explicit match states kept uncertain captures from being treated as established records.
02 / The iteration
Make the vault the source of truth.
As the system grew, the design moved beyond a one-way importer. An Obsidian vault holds the canonical Markdown and YAML records; processing validates, matches, canonicalises and merges new information while preserving manually written content.
Calendar export and job validation sit downstream of that record. The pipeline was shaped to be repeatable, with conflict decisions surfaced for review rather than silently replacing information.
03 / Tested in use
Each step exposed the next question.
Protect existing records
Add validation, identity and matching states, then make merges safe for notes already edited by hand.
Connect the working day
Generate calendar data and explore a native view of current and upcoming work, with manuals and reports as later workflow needs.
Close the loop
Test the handoff between P12 and Obsidian. Deep-link and plugin registration remained a live integration issue in the latest test, so the two-way experience is not presented as finished.
What this demonstrates
A useful tool is built by following the work.
P12 shows a product evolving from a narrow capture task toward a connected field workflow. The durable result is the structured intake and vault-processing foundation; the next iteration is a clearer, dependable two-way experience on the phone.
Interface evidence
Real screens, when ready.
App screenshots will be added here after removing customer and job details. The process diagram above represents the workflow; it is not a screenshot of the app.