Community¶

Community is where you learn ZettelFlow, find a ready-made system, give one back, and look after what you installed. It is one tab with four rooms side by side: Learn, Systems, Contribute and Installed. Choosing a room moves the camera along the strip; you never leave the tab.

Open it from the ZettelFlow ribbon button → Community. The first time it opens on Learn; after that, on the room you used last.

Learn¶

Learn teaches every feature, a few steps at a time, written from these docs.

• Find what you want to do. At the top, Everything ZettelFlow does, step by step, a large search What do you want to do? (press / to jump to it) and a few chips to start from. The search looks through the tutorials, the reference and the questions at once; case and accents do not matter.
• Your progress. A ring and n of N tutorials, with the next thing to do: Start here the first time, then Pick up where you left off. Your progress stays in this vault.
• Tracks. The tutorials come in eight tracks — Your first ten minutes, Think and capture, Read… — each a row of cards. A card says Done when you marked it, and New when it arrived since your last visit.
• Look anything up. One line for every capability, where it is, and a link to its tutorial or its page. Questions people ask answers the common ones.

A lesson opens in place. The pictures fill the stage and the panel beside them says Where it is, then the steps — click one, or use the arrow keys. At the end: Mark as done, a button to do it now when there is one (it runs the feature for you, and Community stays where it was), Read the full page on this site, Up next and Related. Back or Esc returns to the card you came from.

It stays current without an update¶

The tutorials are not inside the plugin. Learn reads them from this project's GitHub when you open it — at most once a session — so a tutorial added today reaches you on your next visit, with no plugin release. A tutorial about a feature newer than your ZettelFlow stays hidden until you update.

• Offline, Learn shows the copy it saved last time and says so: Offline: you are seeing the copy saved on that date. Its pictures need the network and are left blank.
• The very first time with no network, it says Learn needs a connection the first time. and offers Open the docs site.
• When the tutorials need a newer plugin than yours, it says Update ZettelFlow to see the latest tutorials. and keeps showing the copy it has.

Nothing is ever shown as a pop-up; it is all said in the room.

Systems¶

A system is a canvas ready to create notes. Try it here before you install it: nothing is written until you press Install.

1. Pick one. Systems come in two groups, A whole method and One note, done well. Each card is a small drawing of the system's own canvas, its level (three dots) and its steps and branch points. Search systems is the only control. A system you already installed says In your vault.
2. Open it. The card's drawing grows into the stage, in the same tab. Under Try it: walk the flow you walk it on the drawing: the step you are on lights up, and choosing an exit moves you along its arrow. It is a rehearsal — nothing is created and nothing is read from your vault.
3. Say how you will use it. How will you use it? suggests one role — Create notes only when no canvas creates notes yet — and Change offers the rest: Edit the open note, For a folder, When something happens and Just the files. One sentence under it says exactly what will happen: what is created and where, how it will run, what it replaces, and that the notice can undo it. If the system brings code, it says so, and Install waits until you tick I have looked at it and I want it.
4. Install. There is no confirmation dialog — the sentence was the confirmation. The drawing fills the tab and the tab becomes the canvas. The notice says the system is in your vault and how it runs, with Create a note and Undo. Obsidian's Back returns you to Systems, where the drawing flies home onto its card.

Steps and markdown templates are folded at the bottom, under Loose pieces; each opens its own install dialog. If the gallery cannot be reached, the room says so and offers Try again. Nothing is written.

Contribute¶

Everything goes through GitHub. Nothing leaves your vault until you publish it yourself.

• Share this canvas as a system leads. It shows the canvas you last had open (or, if none, your creation flow) drawn as it is, with its steps. Prepare the system turns it into a .zftemplate and opens a GitHub form already filled in. When the system is too large for the form, it is downloaded instead, and the card tells you to paste it in. With no canvas at all, the card says Open a canvas to share it.
• Suggest an idea opens a feature request on GitHub.
• Report a bug shows what the report will include — the plugin version, the Obsidian version and the platform — before you press it, so you only describe what happened.
• Talk to other users opens GitHub Discussions.
• How to contribute well moves the camera to Learn and opens the tutorial on sharing a system.

To write a tutorial for Learn, see Adding a tutorial; to author a system, the Systems gallery.

Installed¶

What you brought from the gallery, and how to take it back.

• Systems you installed, newest first. Each row draws its canvas as it is in your vault now, with when, where and in which role it was installed. Installs made before this view existed are not listed.
• Open canvas grows the drawing to fill the tab, and the tab becomes the canvas. Back returns to the row.
• Remove asks once: press it, then Remove n files. Moving to another room cancels it. What it takes back is below. The answer stays where the row was, for example Removed 4 files. Kept 1 you changed: Permanent.md. Back in Systems, the card no longer says In your vault.
• A canvas you deleted or moved leaves its row with Canvas not found and Forget it, which forgets the install and touches nothing in your vault.
• Loose pieces are the steps and actions you installed, each with Edit and Remove. While a step or action is copied in its editor, Add the template from the clipboard adds it here.

With nothing installed, the room says Nothing installed yet. and offers Browse systems.

Undo and Remove¶

Both take an install back, and neither deletes anything for good: files go to Obsidian's trash.

Most shipped systems are one canvas with the steps drawn inside it, so once you edit that canvas, Remove keeps it and says so — Removed 0 files. Kept 1 you changed: … Delete it yourself if you no longer want it, then use Forget it.

Where things are kept¶

Just looking at Learn writes nothing. Opening a lesson records it as the last one, and Mark as done records it done.

Ways in¶

• The ZettelFlow ribbon button → Community, or the command Open community: the room you used last, Learn the first time.
• The command Browse systems, and the buttons that say so — the welcome window's Browse systems to get started, Browse systems on the settings start card Install a ready system, on an empty canvas and in the note wizard when no flow is set: the Systems room.
• Settings → ZettelFlow → Flows, group Systems gallery: Community systems → Browse opens Systems, and Manage installed templates → Manage opens Installed.
• The older commands Open community templates (Systems) and Open manage templates (Installed) still work, so a hotkey you bound keeps working.

Privacy¶

Opening Community reads the gallery's catalog from GitHub, and Learn reads the tutorials when it is shown: read-only GETs, with no account, no upload and no telemetry. Nothing in your vault is sent. See Capabilities & privacy.

For how it is built, see the Community gallery architecture.