Obsidian-template

Note: This template is no longer actively maintained. Things are changing — I now believe Claude Code is all you need. Obsidian's file over app philosophy works great for AI agents like Claude Code. Your notes are just files, and agents can read, write, and reason over them directly. In my vault, I built custom agents and skills using claudian — a Claude Code plugin for Obsidian vaults. If you're interested in this direction, explore that.

Check out for my new vault, simpler and better. https://github.com/tuan3w/obsidian-vault-agent.

Obsidian-template

Motivation

I started new note-taking method after reading an interesting post about Zettelkasten method in Hacker News. For many years, I was struggling about how to organizing my reading list as well as what I learned. I tried many tools & approaches like using Pocket, using browser bookmark, Medium, Trello, Twitter likes,... Nothing has worked. I kept forgetting about what I has read. Our memory isn't reliable as we might think. Building Second Brain idea has changed the way I learn. Obsidian is my favorite tool to build it. I keep changing how I get the most out of Obsidian.

I would love to share my templates with others, who are interested in learning and want to organizing your learning process better.

What is inside this template ?

Theme

Obsidian minimal

Templates

There are various templates I often use that you can find in templates folder.

Term : can be used to define specific term. should be short, simple, atomic.
Resource: A type of entry notes about any topic, contains many related terms, links about one topic. You can use this as an entry points to explore other concepts in a topic.
Quote File: Quote said by famous people.
Create Anki Card: Used to mark a card as anki card. See more details in section bellow.
ID: Generate unique Zettelkasten ID for current note.
Book: Summary about a book.
Thought: used to capture my ideas.
...

Extensions

Templater: Template plugin for obsidian
Outliner: Work with your lists like Workflowy
Emoji Shortcodes : to add new icon to your notes.
Style Settings: Custom style
Kanban: To manage your reading list.
Spaced Repetition: to create anki cards .
Advanced Tables: Edit table
Note Refactor: Refactor notes
Dictionary: Dictionary app
Cycle through Panes: Cycle through your open Panes
Contextual Typography: Adjust typography styling
Linter: Fix format errors
Calendar
Excalidraw
Smart Random Note : Random visit notes from your search result.
Tag Wrangler: rename, merge, search tags from Obsidian tag pane.
Dataview: Creates automatic lists, tables from our notes.
Homepage: Custom your home page.
Auto Note Mover: Auto organize notes by tags.
Khoj: An AI copilot for your second brain. Search and chat with your personal knowledge base, online or offline.
Obsidian Image Converter: Convert image to webp to save space.

Taking notes tips

1. Creating notes

Create new Zettelkasten notes when you want to take note about new thing by hot key Ctrl+N and pick a template by using hot key Ctrl+T
For books, you might want to add link to local file so that you can open book from your note quickly.
If you want to add content later, just add a todo tag in the front matter.
The note is formatted every time you save your note, thanks to linter plugin.

2.Review a topic/notes

Notes are organized by topics. Open search and search for tag you want to review. Press Ctrl+Tab to view a random note from your search result.
Any new note should add a review tag and remove it as soon as you think it's good enough. To visit a note that need to be reviewed, enter Ctrl+R or exec command Spaced Repetition: Open a note for review.

3. Track your reading

I created two Kanban boards to track my regular reading and book reading. I think it really helps when you have multiple things in your reading list. Again, don't trust your memory.

4. Naming file

One tip I regularly find useful is adding type of notes in the file name to make them clear, so you can navigate file later easier. For example:
- Resource notes: (Resource) Topic name
- Kanban board: (Kanban) Books
- Book: (Book) product

5. Anki card

Overtime, you will create new cluster of knowledge. You might want to review this topic using better way than visiting them randomly. So Anki is your friend. Creating new anki deck is simple enough:
- Add new desk: Add tag about topic in Spaced repetition plugin setting. I prefer this approach more than turning folder name into deck name because it provides more better control.
- Add new card: I only used multiple-line card style . I choose [ ](#anki-card) as separator because it's invisible in preview mode. To add separator, just use template Create Anki Card to insert the separator after the first heading of the note. By default, Term card is an anki card.

6. Hot keys

I use a number of hot keys to make quick actions. You can see them in Hotkeys section in the setting.

8. Auto note organizer

I use Auto Note Mover to auto organize my notes. It's really helpful when you have a lot of notes. Just add tag to your note and it will be moved to the folder you specify in the plugin settings.

9. Automatic gather our ideas

I use DataView plugin to create automatic list. For example, you can use DataView to gather all your ideas in one place. See example. However, the downside of this approach is that the all the links won't be displayed in graph view. So you might consider manual linking if you need that.

10. Stats tracking (optional)

I also provide some script to update your reading stats (how many notes you have taken over time). Everytime you want to update git, just run command:

$ ./update your message without quote here

It will add all the new notes, update note stats, generate a picture of your progress and create new commit with your message. Your stats will look like this:

11. Question documents with Khoj

You may have many documents that you want to read, but not have time to review them yet. You can use Khoj to search and chat with your documents. For example, when I want to read a paper, I will create a note with the paper attached inside the note.

12. Automatically Title New Links

This plugin will automatically fetches the webpage to extract link titles when they're pasted, creating a markdown link with the correct title set.

13. Image Converter for Obsidian

This plugin will convert to image to webp to save space.

14. Web clipper templates

I use several templates to capture web content that I find potentially valuable for later review. These templates are available in the web-clipper folder.

You can import these templates through the Obsidian Web Clipper extension settings. Additionally, you can leverage your preferred LLMs to automatically summarize content and generate relevant hashtags.

Screenshots

FAQs

If you wanted to know more about Zettelkasten method, I recommend book How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers as a good start.

Happy learning :).

License

MIT

obsidian-template