telekasten.nvim/README.md

telekasten.nvim

A Neovim (lua) plugin for working with a markdown zettelkasten, based on telescope.nvim

Find notes by name, daily and weekly notes by date, search within all notes, place and follow links to your notes or create new ones. Current daily and weekly notes are (optionally) created if not present when searching for dailies or weeklies. Following a link to a non-existing note can also create the missing note (optional).

Search-based navigation

Every navigation action, like following a link, is centered around a Telescope search: a Telescope search popup is opened, and in the case of following a link, the search-text is pre-filled with the target. So, instead of opening the linked note, you get a preview in Telescope and can decide if you actually want to go there. Since the search is often likely to show up more than one result, you can preview related notes immediately.

The preview is a powerful feature

Leaving the opening of the note to Telescope, you can decide with one keypress whether you want to open the note in a split or in the current window - or if you've seen enough.

I find that pressing the enter key to confirm the search does not interrupt my flow, and I really enjoy being able to check the preview. I often get enough information from the it alone so I don't actually have to "visit" every note in terms of being able to edit it.

Install and setup

0. Prerequisites

Telescope

Since this plugin uses telescope.nvim, you need to install it first.

Neovim (v0.5.1) or the latest neovim nighly commit is required for telescope.nvim to work.

Ripgrep

For proper sort order of daily notes, the rg executable (Ripgrep) is required and needs to be installed so that nvim can find it. So make sure, it's in your path.

If rg isn't found at setup() time, it will not be used. In that case, the sort order of daily and weekly notes are likely to be reversed. I do accept pull requests, though, for a lua implementation 😁!

If you can't use rg, I recommend using goto_today() and goto_thisweek() instead of find_daily_notes() and find_weekly_notes(), as this pre-fills the search field, and the results list will look a bit more sane.

1. Install the plugin

Install with your plugin manager of choice. Mine is Vundle.

Plugin 'renerocksai/telekasten.nvim'

2. Configure telekasten.nvim

Somewhere in your vim config, put a snippet like this:

lua << END
local home = vim.fn.expand("~/zettelkasten")
require('telekasten').setup({
     home         = home
     dailies      = home .. '/' .. 'daily',
     weeklies     = home .. '/' .. 'weekly',
     extension    = ".md",

     -- following a link to a non-existing note will create it
     follow_creates_nonexisting = true,
     dailies_create_nonexisting = true,
     weeklies_create_nonexisting = true,

     -- template for new notes (new_note, follow_link)
     template_new_note = home .. '/' .. 'templates/new_note.md',

     -- template for newly created daily notes (goto_today)
     template_new_daily = home .. '/' .. 'templates/daily.md',

     -- template for newly created weekly notes (goto_thisweek)
     template_new_weekly= home .. '/' .. 'templates/weekly.md',
})
END

Use it

The plugin defines the following functions.

• new_note : prompts for title and creates new note by template, then shows it in Telescope
• find_notes() : find notes by file name (title), via Telescope
• find_daily_notes() : find daily notes by date (file names, sorted, most recent first), via Telescope. If today's daily note is not present, it can be created optionally, honoring the configured template
• goto_today() : pops up a Telescope window with today's daily note pre-selected. Today's note can optionally be created if not present, using the configured template
• find_weekly_notes() : find weekly notes by week (file names, sorted, most recent first), via Telescope. If this week's weekly note is not present, it can be created optionally, honoring the configured template
• goto_thisweek() : pops up a Telescope window with this week's weekly note pre-selected. This week's note can optionally be created if not present, using the configured template
• search_notes(): live grep for word under cursor in all notes (search in notes), via Telescope
• insert_link() : select a note by name, via Telescope, and place a [[link]] at the current cursor position
• follow_link(): take text between brackets (linked note) and open a Telescope file finder with it: selects note to open (incl. preview) - with optional note creation for non-existing notes, honoring the configured template
• setup(opts): used for configuring paths, file extension, etc.

To use one of the functions above, just run them with the :lua ... command.

:lua require("telekasten").find_daily_notes()

Note templates

The functions goto_today, goto_thisweek, find_daily_notes, find_weekly_notes, and follow_link can create non-existing notes. This allows you to 'go to today' without having to create today's note beforehand. When you just type [[some link]] and then call follow_link, the 'some link' note can be generated.

The following table shows which command relies on what config option:

telekasten function	config option	creates what
goto_today	dailies_create_nonexisting	today's daily note
find_daily_notes	dailies_create_nonexisting	today's daily note
goto_thisweek	weeklies_create_nonexisting	this week's weekly note
find_weekly_notes	weeklies_create_nonexisting	this week's weekly note
follow_link	follow_creates_nonexisting	new note
new_note	always true	new note

If the associated option is true, non-existing notes will be created.

Template files

The options template_new_note, template_new_daily, and template_new_weekly are used to specify the paths to template text files that are used for creating new notes.

Currently, the following substitutions will be made during new note creation:

specifier in template	expands to	example
{{title}}	the title of the note	My new note
{{date}}	date in iso format	2021-11-21
{{hdate}}	date in long format	Sunday, November 21st, 2021
{{week}}	week of the year	46
{{year}}	year	2021

As an example, this is my template for new notes:

---
title: {{title}}
date:  {{date}}
---

And I use this one for daily notes:

---
title: {{hdate}}
---

And finally, the weekly notes (that I don't use a lot):

---
title: {{year}}-W{{week}}
date:  {{hdate}}
---

# Review Week {{week}} / {{year}}

---

## Highlights
- **this**!
- that!

## Monday link
## Tuesday link
## Wednesday link
## Thursday link
## Friday link
## Saturday link
## Sunday link

Bind it

Usually, you would set up some key bindings, though:

nnoremap <leader>zf :lua require('telekasten').find_notes()<CR>
nnoremap <leader>zd :lua require('telekasten').find_daily_notes()<CR>
nnoremap <leader>zg :lua require('telekasten').search_notes()<CR>
nnoremap <leader>zz :lua require('telekasten').follow_link()<CR>
nnoremap <leader>zt :lua require('telekasten').goto_today()<CR>
nnoremap <leader>zw :lua require('telekasten').find_weekly_notes()<CR>
nnoremap <leader>zn :lua require('telekasten').new_note()<CR>

" we could define [[ in **insert mode** to call insert link
" inoremap [[ <ESC>:lua require('telekasten').insert_link()<CR>
" alternatively: leader [
inoremap <leader>[ <ESC>:lua require('telekasten').insert_link()<CR>

The hardcoded stuff

Currently, the following things are hardcoded:

• the file naming format for daily note files: YYYY-MM-DD.ext (e.g. 2021-11-21.md)
• the file naming format for weekly note files: YYYY-Www.ext (e.g. 2021-W46.md)