Obsidian-Templates for Zettelkasten

A repository containing templates and scripts for Obsidian to support the Zettelkasten method for note-taking.

Obsidian

Obsidian is a note-taking and knowledge management app from Shida Li and Erica Xu. It works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files and lets you turn a collection of plain text files into a rich network of linked thought.

More about: https://obsidian.md

Zettelkasten

Zettelkasten is a personal tool for thinking and writing created by Niklas Luhmann. It has hypertextual features to make a web of thought possible. The difference to other systems is that you create a web of thoughts instead of notes of arbitrary size and form, and emphasize connection, not a collection.

More about: https://www.soenkeahrens.de/en/takesmartnotes

Usage

Copy templates to your Obsidian template folder location to make them available as templates within Obsidian. More about: Obsidian Help - Templates

Or use it as part of the Obsidian-Zettelkasten-Starter-Kit.

5 Mandatory Obsidian Plugins

1. Bases - Creates database-like views of your notes. Used to view, edit, sort, and filter files and their properties.
2. Book Search - Easily creates book notes from Google Books API.
3. DataView - Provides a query language for filtering, sorting, and extracting data from Markdown pages.
4. Frontmatter Tag Suggest - Autocompletes tags in the YAML frontmatter.
5. Wikipedia - Gets the first section of Wikipedia and pastes it into your active note.

9 Optional Obsidian Plugin

1. Auto Link Title - Fetches the webpage to extract link titles when they're pasted, creating a markdown link with the correct title set.
2. Callout Manager - Creating and configuring callouts.
3. Charts - Easily create interactive charts for your notes.
4. File Explorer Note Count - Shows number of elements under all available folders within file explorer.
5. Iconize - Add icons to anything in Obsidian, including files, folders, and text.
6. Paste image rename - Allows to rename the image if you want images to be named and organized clearly.
7. PlantUML - Renders PlantUML Diagrams in Obsidian.
8. Sortable - Offers Wikipedia-like sortable tables. But no longer supported!
9. Tag Wrangler - Rename, merge, toggle, and search the tag pane.

Basic Template Structure

Zettelkasten Templates

List of Templates

You first may have a look at my note examples created from these templates: EXAMPLES.

1_Fleeting Notes

• Fleeting Templates

2_Literature Notes

• Book Template -> needs plugin: Book Search + DataView
• Person Template -> needs plugin: DataView
• Quote Template -> needs plugin: DataView
• Recipe Template -> needs plugin: DataView
• Term Template -> needs plugin: DataView + Wikipedia
• Tool Template -> needs plugin: DataView

3_Permanent Notes

• Note Template -> needs plugin: DataView
• Observation Template -> needs plugin: DataView
• Proposition Template -> needs plugin: DataView
• Question Template -> needs plugin: DataView
• Prompt Template -> needs plugin: DataView

4_Project Notes

• Book Template -> needs plugin: Better Word Count + -> needs plugin: DataView
• Comment Template -> needs plugin: Better Word Count + -> needs plugin: DataView
• Post Template -> needs plugin: DataView

5_Structures

• BuJo - Future Log
• BuJo - Monthly Log -> needs plugin: DataView
• BuJo - Weekly Log
• BuJo - Daily Log
• Exploration Template
• Meeting Notes Template
• OKR Template -> needs plugin: DataView
• Structure Template -> needs plugin: DataView

Template Snippets

• Back Matter Snippet
• Book Frontmatter Snippet
• Dataview Table Snippet -> needs plugin: DataView
• DataviewJS Quote Snippet -> needs plugin: DataView
• E-book Back Matter Snippet
• Frontmatter Snippet

1 Toolset, 5 Types of Notes

More about: Luhmann's Zettelkasten and Ahrens' Zettelkasten

How to Use Links

More about: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/link-notes-but-how/

How to Use Tags

More about: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/use-meta-data-but-how/

How to Use Properties

More about: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/16-obsidian-templates-for-zettelkasten-to-start-with/49098/58

How to Search Notes

More about: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/search-and-retrieve-notes-how-do-you-search-in-zettelkasten/65386

Zettelkasten Ontology

More about: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/limit-folders-how-do-you-use-zettelkasten-in-obsidian/35008/32

Zettelkasten Canvas

More about: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/12-principles-for-using-zettelkasten/51679/13

The Minimalist's Zettelkasten

The provided podcast from NotebookLM consists of excerpts from a book titled "The Minimalist’s Zettelkasten: Think Better with Less", authored by Edmund Gröpl. It is set to be independently published in late 2026.

More about: https://github.com/groepl/Take-Useful-Notes/

FAQ

• Where can I discuss my own experiences with these templates?
• What are the rules for using Properties with YAML Frontmatter?
• How to use Tags and Nested Tags in Obsidian?
• How can I learn more about Obsidian and Zettelkasten?

Creative Commons License

Obsidian Templates © 2022-25 by Edmund Gröpl is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Contact

Please leave feedback here in the GitHub discussions or file a new issue if you found a bug or have a feature request. You can reach me via Mastodon too: https://darmstadt.social/@groepl