Obsidian Vault Template

A reusable Obsidian vault for projects, research, study, and collaborative work. It keeps notes in plain Markdown so the vault can be versioned, shared, and edited outside Obsidian.

What’s included

• A domain-neutral folder structure for knowledge, projects, meetings, decisions, references, assets, temporary notes, and archives.
• Seven note templates with consistent YAML properties.
• An Open actions dashboard powered by the Tasks plugin.
• Git synchronization configured for periodic pull, commit, and push.
• Community plugins for Git, Tasks, Excalidraw, Terminal, and optional Claudian AI assistance.
• An opt-in installer for the complete community-plugin set used by the Food Waste Project vault.

Get started

1. Create a new repository from this template on GitHub, or copy this folder to a new location.
2. Clone the new repository if it is hosted on GitHub.
3. Open the folder in Obsidian with Open folder as vault.
4. Trust the vault when Obsidian asks whether to enable community plugins.
5. Open Getting started and complete the checklist.

The template is intentionally domain-neutral. Rename or remove folders as your vault requires, but keep Templates/ and Assets/ unless you also update the corresponding Obsidian settings.

Folder guide

Content	Location
General knowledge and guides	Knowledge/
Projects	Projects/
Meeting notes	Meetings/
Decisions	Decisions/
Papers, links, and sources	References/
Note templates	Templates/
Images and small attachments	Assets/
Temporary or uncategorized notes	TempMisc/
Finished or obsolete material	Archive/

Keep large documents, datasets, videos, and generated deliverables in a purpose-built storage location and link to them from the relevant note.

Daily workflow

• Start structured notes with a template from Templates/.
• Write action items in the note where they arise; Open actions collects every unfinished checkbox automatically.
• Link related notes instead of duplicating information.
• Pull before making large edits when several people share the repository.
• Commit and push after a work session, or let the Git plugin sync on its configured schedule.

Templates and properties

Use Insert template from the command palette to start a note. Templates provide a small, consistent property block:

Property	Meaning
type	note, project, experiment, meeting, decision, reference, or procedure
project	Optional link to the project note
status	draft, active, completed, superseded, or archived
created	Creation date in YYYY-MM-DD format
tags	Free-form keywords

See Note conventions for the full guidance.

Tasks and action items

Write ordinary Markdown checkboxes in meetings, projects, decisions, and other notes. Optional due dates and project tags make the dashboard more useful:

- [ ] Review the draft (Owner) 📅 2026-09-05 #project/example

Open Open actions for the vault-wide view. See Action items for the convention.

Git synchronization

The bundled Git plugin is configured for periodic pull, commit, and push. For manual synchronization, use the command palette:

• Git: Pull before starting collaborative work.
• Git: Commit-and-sync after making changes.

Do not store passwords, access tokens, or private keys in the vault. Handle GitHub authentication through Git, GitHub Desktop, or your operating system’s credential manager.

Optional plugins

The template starts with these five plugins enabled:

• Git for version control and synchronization.
• Tasks for live task queries.
• Excalidraw for diagrams and free-form drawings.
• Terminal for an integrated shell.
• Claudian for optional AI-assisted work on the vault.

Claudian is desktop-only and requires a supported command-line provider to be installed and configured locally. Review plugin permissions before using it on a shared or sensitive vault.

The repository also carries the exact plugin payloads used by the project vault for optional installation. The available additional plugins are Image Converter, Importer, Latex Suite, Linter, Pandoc Plugin, Zotero Integration, Recent Files, Smart Connections, Advanced Tables, Tag Wrangler, and Templater. Pandoc, Zotero Integration, and Claudian are desktop-only; Pandoc and Zotero also require their corresponding local applications or command-line tools.

Plugin	ID	Bundled version
Image Converter	image-converter	1.4.6
Importer	obsidian-importer	3.0.0
Latex Suite	obsidian-latex-suite	1.12.8
Linter	obsidian-linter	1.32.0
Pandoc Plugin	obsidian-pandoc	0.4.1
Zotero Integration	obsidian-zotero-desktop-connector	3.2.1
Recent Files	recent-files-obsidian	1.7.10
Smart Connections	smart-connections	4.7.2
Advanced Tables	table-editor-obsidian	0.23.2
Tag Wrangler	tag-wrangler	0.6.5
Templater	templater-obsidian	2.25.0

The installer is never run automatically. List the available plugins first:

./scripts/install-optional-plugins.sh --list

Install selected plugins into this template:

./scripts/install-optional-plugins.sh image-converter table-editor-obsidian

Install every available plugin into another vault derived from this template:

./scripts/install-optional-plugins.sh --all --target /path/to/vault

Use --dry-run to inspect the changes without writing files. The installer requires Python 3 to validate and update community-plugins.json. Existing plugin data.json settings in the target vault are preserved; bundled settings are used when a plugin is installed into a fresh target.

Rules of thumb

• Keep notes small enough to merge comfortably.
• Link instead of copying the same fact into multiple notes.
• Mark outdated notes as superseded or archived instead of deleting useful history.
• Keep credentials and sensitive data out of the repository.
• Agree on major folder or property changes before applying them to a shared vault.

Guides

• Getting started
• Note conventions
• Action items
• External resources