obsidian-template is retired, and its author says why in the first paragraph

The first paragraph withdraws the project and names its successor

The readme opens by retiring the thing it describes. The note says the template is no longer actively maintained, gives the reason as a change of mind rather than a shortage of time, and names the belief that replaced it: that notes are files, and an agent that reads and writes files directly does not need a database application in the middle. The philosophy is credited to a linked essay on the file-over-app idea, and the author says the approach works well for coding agents. What he built instead is a plugin for Obsidian vaults, and he points readers at it, then at a new vault of his own described as simpler and better, with its own repository. That is the whole announcement: the old vault still works, the author has moved on, and two specific links are given in place of it.

Twenty-one plugins, each a separate upstream release cycle

The extension list is long enough to be the substance of the template. It covers template expansion, list behaviour like a workflow tool, emoji shortcodes, style settings, a board view for the reading list, spaced repetition, table editing, note refactoring, a dictionary, pane cycling, typography controls, a formatter, a calendar, a drawing surface, random note visits from a search result, tag renaming, an automatic list and table generator, a custom home page, tag-based note moving, an assistant that searches and chats with your own notes online or offline, and an image converter that rewrites images to a smaller format. Every one of those is a separate project on its own schedule. Nothing in the list is pinned here, so the vault's behaviour is the intersection of twenty-one upstream release cadences, and a plugin update can change formatting or shortcuts without anything in this repository changing.

Eight templates named by what they are for, not by note type

The templates folder is described with one line per template, and the lines are short enough to be worth quoting as a set. A term template is for a specific term, and the instruction is that it should be short, simple, and atomic. A resource template is an entry note about a topic containing many related terms, and its stated purpose is to serve as an entry point into other concepts. There is one for a quote attributed to someone notable, one for a book summary, one for a thought of your own, one that marks a note as a flashcard, and one that generates the unique identifier the whole method depends on. The separation is the point: a term note and a resource note are different objects with different jobs, and a vault that keeps them apart is what makes the identifier scheme work.

The tips section is a review discipline, not a feature list

The workflow section is the part of this repository that is not a list of links, and it reads as advice rather than documentation. New notes are created with a keyboard shortcut and a template is picked with another. A todo tag in the front matter is the marker for content you intend to add later. Notes get formatted on every save, which the author attributes to the formatter plugin rather than to discipline. Review works through search: find a tag, then open a random note from the results with a third shortcut. Every new note gets a review tag and is supposed to lose it as soon as it is good enough, and a separate shortcut or a named command opens a note for review. Two kanban boards track regular reading against book reading. The recurring instruction, stated more than once, is not to trust your memory.

File names carry the note type in parentheses

One convention is called out as a regular habit, and it is the cheapest thing here to adopt. The type of note goes into the file name in parentheses, so a resource note is named with the word and the topic, a board is named with the word and its subject, and a book summary is named with the word and the title. The stated reason is navigational: you can find the file later by reading the name. That is a small thing that compounds, because a vault of files sorted by name and a vault of files sorted by folder behave differently the first time you have four hundred of them. The identifier template exists for the same reason, giving each note the unique key the method requires, and the two habits are meant to be used together.

The repository ships someone's actual notes, not a clean vault

The tree is short and it tells you what this is. There is a vault configuration directory, a templates directory, a notes directory, an assets directory, a screenshots directory, an update script with no file extension, a statistics script, and a single image whose name suggests it is a generated report of usage counts. A notes directory at the root of a template repository is a decision, not an oversight: it means the author's own reading history is versioned here alongside the templates. That is genuinely useful as a worked example, because you can read how a real vault is structured rather than inferring it from a description. It is also the reason a clone is heavier than a template needs to be, and the reason the usage statistics script and its image are present at all.

The table of contents skips a number and the readme stops mid-sentence

Two small editorial details, both traceable. The generated table of contents near the top lists fourteen numbered tips and the numbers run one, two, three, four, five, six, then eight. There is no seven. The tips continue through a section on automatically gathering ideas, an optional section on statistics tracking, a section on asking questions of your own documents, one on titling new links automatically, one on converting images, and one on web clipper templates, and the readme then ends partway through the sentence introducing the anki card section, on the word Creatin. So the numbering gap and the ending are both facts about the file rather than something to reconstruct. The last push on the repository is dated 2026-03-21, and there are no releases, so the state of this vault is whatever the last commit left behind.

Editorial conclusion

Use this vault if you want a working Zettelkasten setup to look at rather than a template to build on, because the tips section is the real content and it teaches a review discipline, a naming convention, and a card workflow that most templates skip. The author has retired it, in writing, in the first paragraph, and points at a different vault of his own as the simpler successor. That is worth weighing before you spend an afternoon wiring up twenty-one plugins. Two things to check first. Nothing here is a product with a release process, so the last commit is the version, and the plugin list is a set of third-party links that move on their own schedules rather than anything pinned by this repository. And the notes directory in the tree is someone's actual reading history, which is useful as a worked example and is not something to copy wholesale into your own vault without reading it.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. README
4. tuan3w/obsidian-template on GitHub