A practical guide for setting up Zettelkasten method in Obsidian
by rkrizanovskis on 4/9/2026, 7:58:00 AM
https://desktopcommander.app/blog/zettelkasten-obsidian/
Comments
by: starky
How many people actually find utility from a Zettelkasten system?<p>I just can't bring myself to go to the effort of documenting a thought and adding links/tags unless it is something I predict that I will need sometime in the future and won't just remember. Due to this, my Obsidian vault is pretty much a collection of a bunch of temporary to-do lists and then some folders with specific reference information. If I'm linking thoughts together I'm doing it real time in my head, anything else takes me too far out of my thought process.<p>I can see it if you are a person working in academia or a writer where you may be generating concepts that you want to link together in the future. But as someone that does project type work, I'm following too much of a defined process to see any benefit.
4/11/2026, 6:08:20 AM
by: bryanhogan
I have written something similar! Used and improved my Obsidian setup through years of use.<p>My practical guide on setting up a smart notes / Zettelkasten / atomic notes Vault: <a href="https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-zettelkasten" rel="nofollow">https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-zettelkasten</a><p>Also wrote about how it fits into my overall Vault setup: <a href="https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault" rel="nofollow">https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault</a>
4/11/2026, 5:03:33 AM
by: gbro3n
I built the AS Notes extension for VS Code (<a href="https://asnotes.io" rel="nofollow">https://asnotes.io</a>) partly because I wanted to be able to write my notes with the support of other VS Code extensions, and because of the agent harness options in VS Code (copilot etc). The key thing for easy zettlekasten management is really good wikilink support in markdown. AS Notes supports nested wikilinking and automatic updating in the index on rename etc.
4/11/2026, 7:28:29 AM
by: lilerjee
It is too complicated. We just get, save or write something, maybe with some categories, keywords, or tags.<p>After saving, maybe you need some organization later, but most time they are just there. Most time you search content by categories, keywords, or tags.<p>I think we need right tools for different requirements.
4/11/2026, 4:19:34 AM
by: skiwithuge
I'm doing a similar system that works through a telegram bot and a self hosted instance<p><a href="https://github.com/skiwithuge/brainstack" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/skiwithuge/brainstack</a>
4/11/2026, 5:53:34 AM
by: bryanhogan
On a different note, the website feels a bit quickly AI generated just made to promote this desktopcommander app?<p>Edit: Oh, I actually just found the comment from the author here, sounds like AI slop.
4/11/2026, 5:10:04 AM
by: compressedgas
Please credit Sönke Ahrens and his 2017 book _How to Take Smart Notes_ for this system.
4/9/2026, 11:00:44 AM
by: delineato
[dead]
4/9/2026, 8:11:49 AM
by: mvkel
Systems like these made sense in the pre-AI era, where things needed to be organized at the outset to be useful later.<p>With AI, there's nothing stopping you from dumping a huge pile of information into a single folder and telling an AI what you want to make with it that day.
4/11/2026, 6:02:35 AM
by: rkrizanovskis
Most people set up a Zettelkasten Obsidian system, but abandon it by month three. The method itself works. The problem is that most guides stop at day one and don’t address what comes after.<p>We’ll focus on both: how to set it up, and how to keep it running over time with the right habits and AI support. What the Zettelkasten method actually is (and what it isn’t) The Zettelkasten method (German for “slip box”) was popularized by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Over roughly 40 years, he created around 90,000 handwritten notes and used them to produce some 600 publications, including about 60 books. He referred to his Zettelkasten as his “second memory” and credited it as a key part of his output. Originally, the method was built for researchers drowning in information. People who needed to read, process, and connect vast amounts of source material.<p>Today, AI has created a new kind of knowledge problem. Large language models can’t do much with raw notes or scattered documents. LLMs work better with structured, clearly defined pieces of information that can be referenced and combined. The Zettelkasten format maps almost perfectly onto how AI knowledge bases need to be organized:<p>One idea per unit Clearly titled Richly connected<p>But before you set one up, you need to understand what Zettelkasten actually is. Because most people get it wrong from the start.
4/9/2026, 7:58:00 AM