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ZettelFlow Community Resources Guide

Community's four rooms side by side — Learn, Systems, Contribute, Installed — with the nav that pans between them

Introduction to Community Resources

ZettelFlow allows the community to share templates, flows, and actions to help users enhance their note-taking experience. They are reached from Community, one view with four rooms: you find them in its Systems room and look after what you installed in its Installed room.

Types of Community Resources

ZettelFlow offers five main types of community resources:

1. Flows (legacy — superseded by Systems)

Flows were complete workflows installed by copying to the clipboard and pasting onto a canvas. As of the Systems Gallery, this is superseded by one-click Systems (a canvas plus its steps, written in one click — no clipboard). Community's Systems room shows systems and no flows; a flow you already have still pastes onto a canvas, but it is no longer the recommended way to adopt a workflow.

2. Steps

Steps are individual components that can be added to your existing workflows. They represent a single action or decision point in a note creation process.

3. Actions

Actions are specific functions that can be performed within a step, such as adding a date, selecting options, or running scripts.

4. Markdown

Markdown templates provide reusable text content that can be incorporated into your notes.

5. Systems (one-click)

Systems are whole knowledge methodologies shipped as a single .zftemplate bundle — a canvas plus its step notes. Unlike a flow (which you copy to the clipboard and paste onto a canvas), a system installs in one click: say how you will use it and ZettelFlow writes the canvas and every step, then the tab becomes the canvas, ready to run. Systems compose the cognitive capabilities — on creation a note is related, cross-checked, link-suggested and maturity-scored against your own graph — so you start from a real workflow, not a blank canvas.

Shipped systems:

  • Academic research — two entry points on one canvas: a literature note mined for claims, matched to candidate sources, cross-checked for contradictions and scored on creation; and a permanent note that lands already related, link-suggested and scored.
  • Zettelkasten v2 — three independent note types on one canvas (fleeting, literature, permanent), each its own entry point, where the permanent note carries the on-creation pattern (find related · find contradictions · suggest links · calculate maturity). This supersedes the older "Zettelkasten Inbox" flow, which remains available for back-compat.
  • PARA v2 — Tiago Forte's PARA as four entry points (Project, Area, Resource, Archive); each lands a note in its PARA folder, tags it by category and connects it with find related. This supersedes the older "PARA classify system" flow, which remains available for back-compat.
  • GTD — Getting Things Done as three entry points (Inbox capture, Next action, Project), moving a thought from capture through clarify to a context-tagged next action.
  • Reading — turn reading into knowledge: a Reading source entry point captures highlights and mines them for claims and candidate sources; a Reading note entry point distills an insight and connects it.
  • Writing — from idea to finished draft: Draft (thesis + related source notes), Section (one point + suggested connections) and Review (surfaces contradictions to resolve) entry points.
  • Software architecture KB — a decision log: an ADR entry point records context/decision/consequences and checks new decisions against existing ones for contradictions; a Component entry point captures a component and its dependencies.

To install a system: open Community → Systems, click a card to open it in place, walk it under Try it: walk the flow, answer How will you use it? and press Install. See Community for the whole path, and the Systems Gallery for the catalog of shipped systems and a guide to authoring your own.

How to Access Community Resources

  1. Open Obsidian and make sure ZettelFlow is installed.
  2. Press the ZettelFlow ribbon button and choose Community (or run Browse systems from the command palette).
  3. Open the Systems room. Steps and markdown templates are folded at the bottom, under Loose pieces.
  4. Click a piece to open its own install dialog.

Keeping a step you copied

The step and action editors can copy what they hold for reuse. While one is copied, Community → Installed shows Add the template from the clipboard above its Loose pieces: press it and the step or action becomes an installed piece, with Edit and Remove like any other.