Get started in 5 minutes¶

No Canvas, no setup — it works in an empty vault.

1. Click the ZettelFlow ribbon button (or run Open ZettelFlow from the command palette).
2. On the welcome screen, click Start with my own idea and choose a note, or capture one.
3. State your question, inspect the material, write a response or a gap, and Save progress.

Then open This note from the ribbon menu: the note you are reading gets a companion in the right sidebar with its state, what argues with it, what it is missing and the one next step.

→ Cultivate an idea · This note

Zettelkasten, PARA, GTD, research, writing, decisions… complete flows you can try before anything is written to your vault.

1. Ribbon menu → Community.
2. Pick a system (you can filter by difficulty) and open it to see its steps.
3. Try it to walk the system without creating anything, then Install system.

→ Install a ready-made system

1. Create a .canvas file (for example flows/daily-note.canvas).
2. In Settings → ZettelFlow, set that canvas as the new notes canvas.
3. Add a note file to the canvas, right-click it → Create managed step, and enable Root.
4. Add actions to the step (a prompt, a selector, tags…) and draw arrows to the next steps.
5. Ribbon button → Create note: your first wizard run.

→ Build your own note flow · Actions