Orbital Reflection Backup

Back up weekly, monthly, and quarterly reflections from Orbital.nyc to Obsidian as Markdown files. This covers two distinct Orbital features:

1. Reflection Log Notes — weekly, monthly, and quarterly private journal-style logs (/log/weekly/, /log/monthly/, /log/quarterly/)
2. Quarterly Community Updates — community-facing reflections with Wins, Lessons, Intentions, and Talk (/member/updates/)

Important: Only back up the authenticated user's own content. Never access other members' posts.

Trigger Phrases

• "back up orbital"
• "sync orbital to obsidian"
• "export orbital reflections"
• "archive orbital logs"
• "download my orbital notes"

Prerequisites

1. Orbital.nyc Account: Active membership with reflection log access
2. 1Password CLI: Credentials stored in item orbital.nyc (ID: y3bbe4uwhmgy4sha32vzdplqpa, fields: email, password)
3. Obsidian Vault: At ~/Obsidian/cag/ (output goes to Orbital/ subfolder)
4. Python 3 + markdownify: pip install markdownify

Quick Run

# Incremental sync (skips unchanged notes)
python skills/orbital/assets/sync.py

# Full re-sync (ignore last_sync timestamp)
python skills/orbital/assets/sync.py --force

The script is idempotent — safe to run multiple times:

• Log notes: Skipped if updatedAt is before the last sync timestamp
• Quarterly updates: Skipped if file content hasn't changed
• File writes: Only write if content differs from existing file
• Sync timestamp stored in ~/Obsidian/cag/Orbital/.last_sync

Output

Directory: ~/Obsidian/cag/Orbital/

Authentication

Orbital uses Supabase for authentication. The sync script handles this automatically:

1. Retrieves email/password from 1Password item y3bbe4uwhmgy4sha32vzdplqpa
2. POSTs to Supabase auth endpoint for a JWT access token (1-hour expiry)
3. Uses Authorization: Bearer <token> header on all API calls

Supabase Auth Details

API Reference

1. Reflection Log Notes

GET https://orbital.nyc/api/account/notes
Authorization: Bearer <supabase_jwt>

Each note has a noteContent object:

• default: freeform HTML (used by weekly notes)
• sections[]: structured Q&A with heading and content HTML (used by monthly/quarterly)

2. Quarterly Community Updates

Three-step process: get member ID, get editions, get posts per edition.

Get member ID:

GET https://orbital.nyc/api/account/member → .member.id

Get editions:

GET https://orbital.nyc/api/networks/member/tasks/history

Editions stored as 1:Q4 2025 — strip 1: prefix for queries.

Get posts:

GET https://orbital.nyc/api/networks/member/posts/user/{memberId}?type={type}&edition={edition}

Post types: win, lesson, poll

The poll type covers multiple sections, differentiated by promptId:

New promptIds may appear as Orbital evolves. The sync script handles unknown promptIds by title-casing them and placing them in an "Other" section.

Each post has: id, type, authorId, lead (headline), body (full text), url (optional link), promptId, dateCreated, finalized, finalizedAt.

Error Handling

Notes

• Only the authenticated user's own content is accessed — member ID comes from /api/account/member
• All API endpoints return redirects; the script follows them automatically
• Weekly notes use freeform default HTML; monthly/quarterly log notes use structured sections
• Quarterly community updates are a separate system from log notes
• Older editions (e.g., Q2 2025) may have null promptIds on lessons — handled as uncategorized
• Use 1Password item ID y3bbe4uwhmgy4sha32vzdplqpa (not name) to avoid ambiguity
• Supabase anon key is a publishable client key (safe to include)