Hi! I’ve created a super-reduced contacts relationship management tool (“CRM”, too big a term for what this is, really). The big idea:
The source of truth is Obsidian, and it offers an easy selective sync to Apple Contacts (on macOS) using macOS Shortcuts. The sync’d entries in Apple Contacts contain a link back to their source notes.
I wanted to keep my contacts in an Obsidian vault, notes and all, while still being able to use my macOS address book (i.e., Contacts.app) – and therefore iOS, thanks to iCloud.
This started as a proof of concept, but it’s quite stable by now. AFAIK, people besides myself do use it productively.
Screenshot
Scope of this vault template
Some more details to give you a better idea – these were my ground rules when building it:
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This vault is the source of truth. It contains all the information and notes for all my contacts, one note per person.
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I do not want all of my contacts in my address book because there are personal ones, customers, clients, etc. – and not all of them are relevant in that context.
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I only want to sync a subset of the information contained in a contact note to its related address book entry: basically enough to identify callers, email senders, SMS senders etc. but not much more.
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An address book entry contains a link back to its contact note for easy access to the person’s details.
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A contact note contains a clickable button that creates/updates the address book entry, c/o Apple Shortcuts.
Dependencies
- Obsidian 1.9+
- Actions For Obsidian 2025.1.2+ (macOS/iOS): it provides Shortcuts actions to interact with Obsidian vaults, notes, files
- BarCuts (macOS): for running Shortcuts workflows directly from Obsidian
- If you’re on macOS Sonoma, you need to flip a settings switch in BarCuts to make it work, see here: BarCuts › FAQs › General FAQs — ActionsDotWork. Docs
Download
It works for me, so I extracted it into a vault template:
The repo contains information on installation, usage, some FAQs, etc.
Let me know what you think! It’s in use by me and several other folks already but it could definitely use a couple more people poking it with sticks real good 