Writing in tree structure - The solution to long form writing (Gingko)

Plugins ideas
103

Follow-up:
is anyone interested in finishing the job together?
(I guess there are still bounties :))

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104

Would love to help but I’m coding-clueless. I can help with design and UX, and very minimal CSS. Happy to contribute $

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105

Has anyone been using it with the new ‘Properties’. If I set a CSSClass under CSSClasses, it will retain the property for a while, but eventually, after editing the ‘tree-edit’, it disappears. There must be something in the code that is wiping everything else BUT the tree-edit from the note.

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106

@JaPossert wow incredible job with the progress of this plugin so far, this was so much potential!

For beginners trying to test it, let me know if you’d like me to make a video tutorial showing you how to get this going, since at the moment it’s a bit technical to get it working.

Hope a developer takes interest in this and helps @JaPossert and @artem continue the great work they’ve done with this.

For anyone excited to use this now, I personally still use the official gingko writer a lot, it’s an incredible app, obviously the only big limitation is that it doesn’t work together with Obsidian in local files, since that would be amazing.

what @JaPossert and @artem have built is a huge step, so thank you guys!

I personally hope @Adriano (the original creator of Gingko :pray:) would one day be interested in creating an official paid Obsidian gingko plugin, since personally that would be the ideal solution, and it’s good to see how much interest there is in what Adriano built with the original Gingko app.

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107

In the past 3 days I’ve been working on an new callout type for my community theme Dune and I called this one Timeline.

With this callout you’ll be able to develop your thoughts on a horizontal axis. Each new line in a Timeline callout adds another column. It’s not exactly a tree structure (as this would complicate things for a callout) the goal of this callout is instead, to organize your thoughts and lists within a given time frame.

I consider Timeline as an upgrade to common lists and a bird eye perspective over our actions and plans in time

What my Timeline callout does in detail is documented here

In case you’re interested to know more about my community theme read on here

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108

Your videos are always welcome @santi! I am a Gingko user as well (alongside Obsidian) and indeed if this work it could be a game changer.

109

Thank you for the encouragement, @santi
Just today, I have made a major milestone in putting together a team for an LLM/AI infrastructure involving (Obsidian) notes.
My personal coding litmus test is the project described in this thread.
Intending to post the result here :slight_smile:

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110

That’s incredible @JaPossert appreciate your work, feel free to reach out if I can help in any way!

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111

@santi Thanks for the idea. I’m experimenting with it here https://github.com/ycnmhd/obsidian-lineage.

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112

Looks really promising, I hope it comes to fruition! Is it ready for beta testing?

113

It is very early. Every time I use it I find a new bug, especially when dragging and dropping nodes.

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114

Alright, I will keep an eye out for developments and jump on the bandwagon a bit later :slight_smile:

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115

This is awesome @ycn
I see that the last commit is two weeks old… so, in case you hit a roadblock:
How can we help?
@santi also offered some and I know there are some bounties on this!

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116

@JaPossert Thanks. No roadblocks at the moment.

Edit: the plugin is now available in the community plugin store

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117

Throughly enjoying the plugin. I haven’t ran into any issues and I’m not sure if it’s missing anything previously asked for, but like I said I throughly am enjoying it and most importantly it’s helped with a roadblock for publishing my own writing.

Just randomly downloaded it and I haven’t been following this thread but figured I would pass some appreciation without making an issue on GitHub.

Thank you!

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118

this plugin rules. great implementation of a really cool idea

119

Wow, this is an interesting paradigm for me! And the plugin looks great. Has anyone been able to implement with Daily Notes / Periodic Notes?

Edit: I took a look in source mode and realised it’s basically comments that could be added to a template :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
Are there issues with frontmatter coming ahead of ‘section 1’? Don’t want to cause any issues in the future.

120

This looks really promising, thank you! I always found sequential note taking a bit underwhelming when I need to jump between sections and expand it. I really like the idea of trees when taking notes.

121

Use case or problem

Outlining and writing complex documents often requires juggling big-picture (folder) structure and detailed content nested deep within that structure (notes). Conventional tools force switching between views or rely on flat note structures, which can lead to friction when navigating or restructuring projects. Maintaining context while diving into detailed sections can be difficult.

This is especially relevant when managing large, multi-layered projects such as screenwriting or long-form academic writing, where maintaining a clear overview while focusing on granular details is crucial.

Enter Gingko:

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Authors write by creating “cards,” initially in the leftmost column. That column is meant to hold “top-level” summary writing. Each card can have expanded cards expanding on that topic in the middle column, and so on, into the third column (or deeper). In this fashion, writers can work at high and low levels of detail at the same time, maintaining Peripheral vision. One of the deep columns will end up being the final manuscript.

Gingko removes “friction from ‘drilling down’ into detail” and enables creating a multi-level journal with “line-of-sight from years, months, weeks, to days.”

Quotes are by Andy Matuschak.

For more use cases, see Gingko’s landing page (not affiliated).

There’s a great level of interest in such a mode, as evidenced by the popularity of this post:

Proposed solution

Implement a hierarchical card-based writing model inspired by Gingko. The interface could feature multiple side-by-side panes that represent hierarchical levels:

  • The leftmost pane would contain high-level summaries or headings.
  • The middle pane would allow expanded content for selected headings.
  • The rightmost pane would provide further detail, effectively creating a nested, zoomable workspace.

The design would enable working granularly while retaining a bird’s-eye view of the overall structure. This approach minimizes cognitive load by reducing context-switching and supports both structured writing and brainstorming/outlining processes that involve exploring ideas in a non-linear, flexible manner.

Perhaps this mode could be introduced as a new core plugin.

Current workaround (optional)

  1. Lineage is a great Gingko-inspired plugin. One thing I don’t like about it is that it contains a whole project to a single source note, which is hard to navigate when viewed as a regular note (unless you add a heading to each ‘card’ manually, which is cumbersome).

    Also, it’s more suited for starting a writing project from scratch and less so for structuring an existing collection of notes. It cannot map onto an existing nested folder structure—that is, each ‘level’ in Gingko would be a regular Obsidian folder, with each of its separate notes being its own ‘card’. Each subsequent level in ‘Gingko view’ would be that folder’s subfolder, and so on.

  2. One can open multiple panes side-by-side and utilize nested MOCs to represent a hierarchy. However, this lacks the frictionless and intuitive navigation offered by Gingko.

Related feature requests (optional)

The requests below are in the same vein of adding new and better ways to browse folders:

4 Likes