New to Obsidian, best way to organize different "Workspaces" - Use multiple vaults or use one?

Hi all, have a question about general knowledge management and using multiple vaults.

I am a developer and heavy AI user. I have one vault as my “generic” workspace (named “default”), and another vault specifically for AI related use (storing prompts, agent skills, sub-agent definitions, etc.). But after looking at the communities’ various setups, I am wondering if it would be better to keep just one vault for a better workflow.

I initially went with the separate vaults approach because it looked like the best way to keep a specific topic isolated from another topic. But I’m wondering if there are plugins that can do the same. I.E. Instead of using vaults, use different “default views” for each topic.

Should I keep everything in a single vault? Is there a better way to separate project scope yet still use the same global file tree?

I’m really interested in any way to create separate “workspaces” for lack of a better term.

For instance, I would have one workspace for generic stuff, another workspace for AI stuff, another workspace for admin stuff, etc. I’d ideally like to be able to:

  1. Keep AI related prompts and data into one “workspace” called “AI”
  2. Keep other data and notes into another “workspace” called “Development”
  3. Keep my admin and scripting stuff into another “workspace” called “Admin”
  4. Etc…

Am I missing something really obvious? I am still acclimating to the app after switching from Joplin.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

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Is there a problem with having three folders for those three silos? What are you worried will be cross contaminated? You can view just one folder at a time or search just one folder at a time.

There’s a built-in Workspaces core plugin that does this - it saves your entire panel layout, sidebar state, and open files per workspace. Pair that with top-level folders for your silos (AI/, Dev/, Admin/) and you can stay in one vault while switching contexts cleanly. Enable it in Settings > Core plugins > Workspaces.

Check out this plugin called Portals (you’ll have t use BRAT, its not in community plugins yet)- you can have multiple workspaces there