Systems Gallery¶

A system is a whole knowledge methodology you can install in one click — a ready-to-run canvas plus its step notes, written straight into your vault. Systems are the fastest way to get started with ZettelFlow: instead of a blank canvas you begin from a real workflow that already composes the cognitive actions, so a note you create through a system lands already related, cross-checked, link-suggested and maturity-scored against your own graph.

Systems ship in the unified .zftemplate format and install from the Community Templates browser — see Community resources. Everything is offline (no network, no AI) and additive (nothing in your vault is removed).

Install a system¶

1. Open the Community Templates browser (ZettelFlow ribbon → Community templates).
2. Select the Systems tab and click a system to preview it.
3. Choose an install folder (a per-system subfolder is suggested) and press Install system.
4. ZettelFlow writes the canvas and every step note, then opens the canvas — pick an entry point and go.

Shipped systems¶

Each system offers several independent entry points on one canvas — pick the note type you want to create. Every system carries a difficulty badge in the browser — easy (a light workflow, few actions), medium (more steps and the relation/research actions), hard (the full pipeline). Start easy and grow into the richer systems; the on-creation cognitive work scales with the difficulty.

Previews: each system shows a preview image in the browser. Previews currently ship as placeholders pending final artwork (tracked in issue #223) — the system itself is fully functional regardless.

Systems that run code¶

A system may ship a Script or Dynamic selector action, and those carry JavaScript that ZettelFlow runs with access to your vault. Because systems install in one click from a remote catalog, the install modal says so before writing anything: it names the steps that carry code and asks you to acknowledge it. A system built from stock actions gains no extra step — there is nothing to disclose.

Conditional canvas edges (if: …) are not in that category: they are read by a pure parser with no eval, so they are never reported as executable code.

If you author one, write the code as a YAML block scalar:

  - type: script
    id: my-stamp
    hasUI: false
    code: |
      if (!zf.knowledge.ready()) return;
      content.addFrontMatter({ vault_debt: zf.knowledge.debt().score });

Weekly focus is the shipped example: it picks this week's idea from the ones that grew without your judgement, using zf.knowledge — something no stock action can do.

Author your own system¶

A system is a single .zftemplate JSON bundle: a canvas (a real .canvas) plus its steps (the .md files with zettelFlowSettings frontmatter). To contribute one:

1. Build it in Obsidian. Compose a canvas whose step nodes are .md files carrying valid zettelFlowSettings frontmatter (the same frontmatter the Step Builder writes). Run the command ZettelFlow: Export current canvas as .zftemplate to produce the bundle.
2. Use independent entry points, not a chain. For a system that offers several note types, give each its own root: true step and leave the canvas edges empty — a chained child auto-advances and merges the notes into one. (See any shipped system under docs/systems/.)
3. Stay offline. Compose the graph-computing actions in an onCreation block (find-related, suggest-link, find-contradiction, calculate-maturity, extract-claims, find-sources). Do not use the AI actions (classify, summarize, generate-questions) — a shipped system must run with no network. Avoid actions whose value is a build-time-fixed target (attach-source, create-semantic-relation) — they are no-ops in a template; capture relations with find-related/suggest-link and a plain wikilink prompt instead.
4. Quote YAML-unsafe values. A prompt placeholder/label that starts with [[, @, {, * (or contains :) must be single-quoted, or the frontmatter fails to parse and the step is dropped.
5. Declare a difficulty. Set a top-level "difficulty": "easy" | "medium" | "hard" on the bundle so the gallery shows the right badge — easy for a light workflow, medium once you add relation/research actions, hard for the full on-creation pipeline. Optional; omit it and the badge is simply hidden.
6. Catalog it. Add the .zftemplate under docs/systems/, a sibling <id>.png preview, and a template_type: "system" row to docs/main_template.json (ref = the .zftemplate path).
7. Validate. npm test runs the validity harness (shippedSystems.test.ts + catalog.test.ts): every shipped system must parse, reference only registered non-AI actions, use YAML-safe frontmatter, and resolve its canvas file-nodes to real steps.
8. Publish. The fastest in-app route: build the workflow on a canvas, run ZettelFlow → Export current canvas as .zftemplate (also in the Open ZettelFlow ribbon menu), then submit it through the community browser's Add template link. That closes the loop — your system in the gallery for everyone.