Most plugins help you write. Almost none help you think.
Stop managing notes. Start managing knowledge. Obsidian is the store; ZettelFlow is the engine that makes the knowledge inside it evolve. It turns a native Canvas into a note-creation wizard, opens your notes, PDFs and EPUBs in a Reader built for thinking, and gives you a small set of practice loops that ask something of you. Every loop is offline, works with AI switched off, and writes nothing to your vault you did not decide.
🔁 What it asks of you
Before any feature list, the things ZettelFlow asks you to do — each a small loop on your own notes, each reached where you already are (Home, Think, the Reader, a note's right-click menu):
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| 🔁 Return a claim — say in one sentence what a note claims; later it comes back blind from Home and asks what you say about it now. The return of a claim → | 📖 Look again at what you marked — your Reader highlights come back from Home a few at a time, with one question: do you still think so? A few things you marked → |
| 📄 What survived? — at the end of a chapter you marked, the book gives you a blank leaf: your marks, what they touched, and is one worth a note? What survived → | ✍️ Recall a chapter — put the chapter and your marks away, write what it argued in your own words, then look. Nothing is scored. Recall → |
| 🎲 Collide two notes — from Think, two of your notes with nothing in common, side by side: what could they share? It never answers. Two things far apart (collision) → | ⚖️ Place a wager — add what you expect to see and by when to a claim; on the day, it asks what happened before it shows your prediction. A wager → |
| 🧠 Make a move on an idea — challenge it, reframe it, branch it, set it aside: a cognitive move, recorded as something you did. Make a move → | ✨ And everything else — the Canvas wizard, the semantic graph, health, discovery, dashboards. Everything it does → |
AI is one action, never the product. Every loop and every view works fully with AI disabled; when it is on it proposes, and you accept, edit or reject — the verdict is recorded, never assumed. Knowledge with purpose — starting from your own question and writing a provisional response — needs no AI, methodology or Canvas setup; see Cultivate.
📚 Read like a book — the Reader and your Library
Right-click any note → Read from here. The Reader takes the window and walks you through the note and the notes around it, one chapter at a time — no MOC needed. Your Library puts your PDFs, EPUBs and Web Clipper articles on one shelf, beside the reading paths you saved, and opens them in the same Reader. What you mark lands in Think, never in the book — where you can read it back one book at a time, in the book's order — and a PDF you marked can be handed back as a copy with your notes on it. Esc gives your workspace back exactly as it was.
⚡ How it works — draw it once, every note walks it
Your note workflow is a Canvas. A card is a step, an arrow is the order, a branch is a choice. Press Create note and ZettelFlow walks that graph with you as a short wizard — the idea, its kind, its tags, the links your vault suggests — while a live preview writes the note: frontmatter, body and file name, no template edited by hand. Then the note doesn't land alone: it arrives in your graph, already linked, in the region it belongs to — and you see the bridge it just made.
…and the wizard is only the door. Home is where you land each day: a greeting, Think's composer, where you left off and what came back today, answered in place.
🚀 Get started in 5 minutes
Install ZettelFlow from Obsidian's community plugins — or open it in Obsidian. Everything starts at the ZettelFlow ribbon button, which opens a menu.
- See it work in one click — ribbon → Create note. While no canvas creates notes, it offers Create the example flow: a small canvas with one step, ready to run. Press Create note again and walk it.
- Learn it, or install a ready-made system — ribbon → Community, one view with four rooms. Learn has a short tutorial for every feature. Systems has Zettelkasten, PARA, GTD, research…: walk one on its own drawing before it writes anything, then Install, with Undo right in the notice. Contribute shares your canvas as a system; Installed takes one back.
- No canvas at all — ribbon → Think to write down a thought, or Cultivate to grow one idea.
Draw your own flow:
- Create a canvas (e.g.
flows/Daily note.canvas), right-click it → Use this canvas to create notes → Give it the role.
- Open it and press Create the first step → Note — file with frontmatter. The first step starts the flow on its own.
- Select the step → Edit step → Add an action → Ask for text, and write its Question.
- Ribbon → Create note: the wizard walks your flow and creates the note.
Stuck? Read the getting started guide or open a discussion.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
