Feuillets — one place to write, from notes to books, while keeping your files yours

[Sargon01]

Disclaimer

Is this plugin open source? Yes
Is this plugin completely free? Yes
Is this plugin vibe-coded beyond the author’s ability to comprehend how it works? No
Community Directory: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/feuillets

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I write a lot, but not always the same kind of thing.

I write novels and articles. I prepare courses for my students and make presentations. I collect research, sources and notes. And sometimes I start writing before I even know what form the text will eventually take.

For years, that meant moving between several very good tools.

I wrote two novels in Scrivener, and I still have a lot of respect for it. It taught me the value of a modular manuscript: a book can be made of parts, chapters and scenes without becoming one enormous document.

I also spent a lot of time studying and using Ulysses. I loved much of its ergonomics — the visual calm, the focus on writing, the feeling that the interface could almost disappear behind the text. But its subscription model did not fit what I wanted from a writing tool I might depend on for many years.

Articles and courses often ended up in Word.

Presentations in PowerPoint.

Notes and research increasingly lived in Obsidian.

None of these applications was really the problem.

The problem was that my writing was scattered between all of them.

And eventually another question became more important than convenience.

I wanted the software to be replaceable

Some of what I write may stay with me for decades.

I did not want its future to depend on a particular application, subscription, database or proprietary project format.

I wanted the software to be replaceable.

The writing should not be.

That is why plain Markdown became fundamental for me.

A chapter should remain a file.
A scene should remain a file.
A research note should remain a file.

If the software around them disappears, changes direction, or simply no longer suits me, the writing should still be there.

By then, Obsidian was already where much of my thinking, research and note-taking happened.

So instead of asking whether I could replace Scrivener, Word or PowerPoint, I started asking a different question:

Could the place where I think and research also become the place where I actually write and finish my work?

A novel.
An article.
A course.
A presentation.
A book.

And could I do it while keeping the underlying writing as ordinary local files?

That question became Feuillets.

Building a writing environment around the files

The idea was never to reproduce another application inside Obsidian.

I wanted to keep what I had learned from dedicated writing software while leaving the texts themselves independent from the tool.

Scrivener had shown me the usefulness of structure.

Ulysses had shown me the importance of a calm and fluid writing experience.

And my work as both a writer and a teacher had shown me that the same material can have very different destinations.

So Feuillets gradually grew around three basic needs.

Organize

The Binder lets separate Markdown files become a structured writing project.

Parts, chapters, scenes and sections can remain independent files in the vault while Feuillets lets me work with them as a whole.

Write continuously

This was probably the feature I needed most.

I like keeping a manuscript modular, but I do not want to feel those file boundaries while I am writing.

Continuous mode lets me open a chapter, a folder or a group of files as one editable text.

The writing experience is continuous, but the changes are saved back into the original Markdown files.

many Markdown files → one continuous editor → the same Markdown files

For me, this solved a tension I had lived with for a long time: I no longer had to choose between modular files and continuous writing.

I could have both.

Finish

Eventually I need to stop looking at the structure and see the work as a composed document.

I need to revise it, compare versions, preview it, and eventually produce something that can leave my vault.

So Feuillets also provides revision and comparison tools, composed preview, compilation and export.

The principle underneath all of this is simple:

Feuillets works around the files. It does not take them over.

Not only novels

Feuillets began with long-form writing, but my own work quickly pushed it beyond novels.

An article does not need the same structure as a book. A course may need research, notes and organization but very little else. A presentation has another destination entirely.

And projects can change form.

A note can become an article. An article can feed a course. Research collected for a course can later find its way into a book.

Sometimes I do not know what a text will become when I start writing it.

I wanted the underlying material to remain in the same place instead of moving from application to application every time its destination changed.

That is why Feuillets does not impose one mandatory workflow.

A short article may use almost none of its organizational tools. A novel may grow into a Binder containing dozens or hundreds of files, with research, cards, chronology and narrative threads. A course may use a completely different combination.

Use what the project needs. Ignore the rest.

No writing tool is perfect

I do not think a perfect writing application exists.

Scrivener is not perfect. Ulysses is not perfect. Word and PowerPoint are not perfect. Obsidian is not perfect.

And Feuillets certainly is not either.

Every writing tool embodies choices about how writing should be organized and worked with. Something that feels completely natural to one person may be completely wrong for another.

Feuillets reflects my own needs very strongly.

I am a writer and a teacher, and this is the tool that gradually emerged from the way I actually work.

It works for me.

What I hope now is simply that it may also be useful to other people.

Feuillets is currently at version 2.8.2 and is available in the Community Plugins directory.

It is free and open source.

Local Markdown · No account · No telemetry · No lock-in · GPL-3.0

And if one day I stop using Feuillets, the important part remains:

the writing.

I would be very interested to hear from people using Obsidian for novels, nonfiction, academic writing, essays, teaching, translation, presentations, research-heavy projects, or other long-form work.

You may use Feuillets very differently from the way I do.

That is precisely what I am curious to discover.

Website: https://sargon01.github.io/feuillets-site/
GitHub: https://github.com/Sargon01/Feuillets

[Sargon01]

Update — Feuillets 2.9: one project, several working contexts

Since writing this post, one idea has become much more central to Feuillets: a large project should be able to contain several working contexts without being broken into separate projects.

A folder in the Binder can now become the active workspace. The manuscript remains one project, but Research, the Board, Timeline, Notebook and supported local settings can follow the part I am actually working on. Settings can inherit from a parent folder or from the project instead of being duplicated.

Research also now has a clearer distinction between what belongs to the whole project and what is relevant to the current workspace. Context can bring useful documentation back around the passage being written, while the underlying Research remains ordinary Markdown.

This is especially useful for things like a trilogy, a book made of several parts, a course divided into units, a collection, or any large project where some material is shared and some is local.

The idea is simple:

the project provides continuity; the workspace provides context.

2.9 also adds citation provenance and contextual bibliographies, so a compiled scope can limit its bibliography to the sources actually cited there.

[Sargon01]

Update — Feuillets 3.0: from quick drafts to multi-work projects and academic writing

Since the previous update, Feuillets has continued to develop around the same principle: the structure should adapt to the writing, while the writing itself remains ordinary local Markdown.

From a quick draft to a complete series

A text no longer needs to begin inside a fully structured manuscript.

New quick draft creates an immediately editable Markdown sheet outside whole-project compilation. Its first non-empty line can automatically become its filename. The draft can remain independent, be exported on its own, or later be moved into the Binder and become part of a larger manuscript.

A Binder folder can also now be defined as an independent work.

This means that one Feuillets project can contain:

• several articles;

• a collection of short stories or essays;

• independent course units;

• several books in a series;

• or a complete trilogy.

Each work keeps the same physical Markdown files, but receives its own editorial boundary. It can inherit the main project’s Composition or define its own front matter, contents, bibliography, appendices and export structure. Works may also be nested.

The project provides continuity.
The workspace provides context.
The work provides an editorial boundary.

Research that follows the text being written

Research can now follow the physical branch of the active sheet.

A sheet, chapter, section or work may have its own associated Research folder. Feuillets makes the relevant Research available along that branch without bringing in unrelated sibling material.

This keeps shared project-level documentation possible while allowing a particular article, chapter or volume to use its own sources.

A lightweight academic writing workflow

A workspace can select a BibTeX .bib file and an optional CSL style stored in its associated Research folder.

While writing, typing [@ opens a searchable reference picker. References can be filtered by citekey, author, title or year, and several sources or page locators can be inserted into the same citation:

[@smith2024]
[@smith2024, p. 42]
[@smith2024; @doe2023, pp. 12-14]

The source remains standard Pandoc citation Markdown.

Feuillets can display author-date citations in Preview, list the cited BibTeX entries and their occurrence counts in the Research panel, report unknown keys, and generate a simple Markdown bibliography alongside existing Feuillets Source cards.

Binder isolation is not required: bibliography resources are resolved from the active sheet and its physical ancestor chain.

Native export or a portable Pandoc package

Native Markdown, DOCX, EPUB, ODT and PDF workflows remain available. They preserve the original citekeys, so the manuscript stays reusable outside Feuillets.

For institutions, publishers or journals that require a final CSL-formatted document, Feuillets can now export a portable Pandoc package (.zip) containing:

• the compiled manuscript.md;

• a ready-to-use pandoc.yaml;

• only the .bib files required by the compiled scope;

• the applicable CSL file;

• local media;

• and an issue report when a citation or media file cannot be resolved.

Feuillets does not install, locate or execute Pandoc, Zotero or Better BibTeX. The package is only a bridge to an external academic publishing workflow when one is needed.

The native Feuillets workflow still requires no external executable, account or remote service.

The underlying idea has not changed

A note can remain a note.

It can become an article, a course, a chapter or a book.

Several books can become a series without leaving the project that contains their shared research and history.

And throughout that process, the important part remains a collection of ordinary Markdown files that belong to the author.

Feuillets 3.0 is free, open source and available through the Obsidian Community Plugins directory.

Local Markdown · No account · No telemetry · No lock-in · GPL-3.0

Website: Feuillets — Long-form writing in Obsidian
GitHub: GitHub - Sargon01/Feuillets: Feuillets turns ordinary Markdown files into a complete long-form writing workflow inside Obsidian. · GitHub