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Zettelkasten.de
Personal blog · zettelkasten.dewritingproductivityphilosophy
Zettelkasten.de is a personal blog at zettelkasten.de about writing, productivity and philosophy. Since 2016, 81 different Hacker News readers have linked it 105 times, most often “The Archive (Zettelkasten)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link zettelkasten.de for its introductory overview of the Zettelkasten note-taking method, its well-organised posts and its forum, and as the home of The Archive note app.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- One commenter calls the site's blog posts great and says the overview is a good way in; another calls the site a well-organized resource on the topic; another f
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A Zettelkasten is a personal tool for thinking and writing that creates an interconnected web of thought. Its emphasis is on connection and not mere collection of ideas.
Most-linked posts?
- The Archive (Zettelkasten)17 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2018-04-08
- Zettelkasten: Notes and knowledge management system used in research and study13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2020-01-18
- Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-10-28
- /7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-03-03
- Create a Zettelkasten for Your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing (2013)6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2018-05-28
- The Collector’s Fallacy5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-03-17
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-03-06
- Create a Zettelkasten for Your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing (2013)2 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2016-11-15
- /posts/luhmann-folgezettel-truth/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-06-13
- The Barbell Method of Reading2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-05
What Hacker News says?
I started practicing Zettelkasten recently, using The Archive[1]. I already had a pretty large collection of less-structured notes from nvALT, and I love how the new "rules" really help to shape my new notes. I'm converting old notes as I have the time and need. I was initially skeptical of the idea of timestamping notes in the filename, but I find it counterintuitively useful, and The Archive has really good suppor…
Comment linking /the-archive/
on “Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?”Submitted We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds as a story · 385 points
HN discussionI've been using The Archive ( https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ ) to browse a knowledge graph of markdown files i.e. a Zettelkasten. It's one-time $19 and worth every penny. I use it to browse my notes. There is a shortcut to open them in VIM. It's powerful and simple. Shameless plug: I created a CLI tool to visualize a set of linked markdown files, print stats, and display orphans. See https://github.com/BasilPH…
Comment linking /the-archive/
on “Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files”Submitted Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method as a story · 195 points
HN discussioni found the following useful when i was getting started: https://www.amazon.com/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook... https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/ https://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettel...
Comment linking /posts/overview/
on “Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files”Submitted The Collector’s Fallacy as a story · 134 points
HN discussionKeep trying. Try different methods. What works for me debugging and refactoring distributed systems may not work for you. The thing I tend to drive toward is a single page mind-map-like artifact that is monotonically increasing in density with a focus on system-of-record and data flow. I tend to keep notes about individual tech and important systems in whatever tools are handy, either locally or in a form that are a…
Comment linking /introduction/
on “Use a work journal”Submitted Categories for Your Note Archive Are a Bad Idea (2015) as a story · 33 points
HN discussionRoam is way of using a wiki. i.e. you could quite easily set up a wiki to act in much the same way as Roam. The journal part of Roam, the page-per-day part, is very useful. You write down what you're doing each day, use tags and links to build up a second brain, so to speak. Let's say, today I'm working on kubernetes. I add a tag for k8s, which is a link to the k8s page, where I have all sorts of interesting links a…
Comment linking /posts/overview/
on “Zotero: Personal Research Assistant”Submitted The Antinet Zettelkasten as a story · 15 points
HN discussionThe best description I've found of it is this article: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettel... . Slightly long, but it completely describes how they work and how to implement them practically (on notecards). On the other hand, the articles on https://zettelkasten.de are pretty difficult to understand for the uninitiated.
Comment linking /
on “Using Anki to remember what you read”Submitted Create a Zettelkasten for Your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing (2013) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionWell, the original one isn't unordered, and isn't meant fundamentally to be "searchable" (its original "implementation" being index cards). Here's my attempt at conciseness: A zettelkasten is like a bunch of files in a single folder with 1. a naming schema that kinda indicates what follows what (an ordering scheme, but persnickety and optional, see https://zettelkasten.de/posts/luhmann-folgezettel-truth/ ), and 2. l…
Comment linking /posts/luhmann-folgezettel-truth/
on “Using Anki to remember what you read”Submitted Create a Zettelkasten for Your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing (2013) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI personally found the archive[0] an excellent software to get started with a Zettelkasten. The forum and the blog posts on the site are great. I'm also developing a CLI script to visualize your zettelkasten[1]. I mainly use it to print stats, like the number of connected components and find orphaned notes. [0] https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ [1] https://github.com/BasilPH/vizel
Comment linking /the-archive/
on “Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead”Submitted Create a Zettelkasten for Your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing (2013) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionInteresting to see this kinds of tools get so much attention in the past couple of months! I have seen a lot of buzz around Roam (which is interesting given how outright terrible the initial user experience and conversion funnel is - I did not have the patience and unsub'd immediately..) I ended up buying https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ Super straightforward Zettelkasten system, and most importantly utilizing p…
Comment linking /the-archive/
on “Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing”Submitted Create a Zettelkasten for Your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing (2013) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI have switched to Obsidian and I use multiple vaults for multiple purposes. One is for work, one is for personal projects and notes. One for Books and Movies I watched or want to watch. And one for Zettelkasten[0]. Obsidian is extremely customizable and user-friendly. And to make things even better, which is a must for many people including me, it saves the files as .md in the local storage. You can even sync it am…
Comment linking /
on “Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files”Submitted Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI like these apps because I’ve been trying note taking for 30 years and have had many false starts of solo projects over the years. So when someone releases it makes me a little happy. I like markdown because the interoperability is high. I’d like a command line way to just create a new note in one line that gets stuck somewhere that can be added on or moved around later (eg, “note Inkdrop should be investigated and…
Comment linking /
on “I've been building a Markdown note-taking app for 3 years”Submitted English Translation of All Notes on Zettelkasten by Niklas Luhmann as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere are some links here, from purpose-built to a post on using Trello for it: https://zettelkasten.de/tools/
Comment linking /tools/
on “How to Take Smart Notes”Submitted Create a Zettelkasten for Your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing (2013) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThanks for providing the term. I was surprised to find a well-organized site on this topic: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/zettelkasten-improves-thinking...
Comment linking /posts/zettelkasten-improves-thinking-writing/
on “My bag of tricks – loose notes, design patterns, rules-of-thumb”Submitted The Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSome of these have been mentioned at various points: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/three-layers-structure-zettelk... https://github.com/renerocksai/sublimeless_zk https://tiddlywiki.com/ http://journal.mcmorgan.org/view/incremental-paragraphs/ward... http://fedwiki.org/hack.platform.earth/fedwiki-for-notetakin... https://github.com/burtonator/polar-bookshelf Perhaps a single system is not the answer, but a combinati…
Comment linking /posts/three-layers-structure-zettelkasten/
on “Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?”Submitted Why Categories for Your Note Archive Are a Bad Idea (2015) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHave a look at the German software 'The Archive' https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive , this might be what you are looking for. It is not overloaded with fancy features and is text/markdown based. Enables you to focus on your actual notes and ideas and how to connect and inter-act with them, instead of getting lost in fancy diagrams. Their user forum is in English and is THE best ressource regarding all things Zettel…
Comment linking /the-archive
on “How to build a second brain as a software developer”Submitted Zettelkasten: Different Kinds of Ties Between Notes as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
