An out-of-the-box Obsidian Vault template for beginners: just download, unzip, and open to get a complete knowledge management system — no need to fiddle with plugins and structure.

https://t.co/9lRe9j4enp https://t.co/nTISj7ujFZ

IvyChim/Obsidian-Template

Source: https://github.com/IvyChim/Obsidian-Template

Ivy’s Obsidian Life System

An All-in-One Obsidian knowledge management system built on PARA and Periodic Notes.

This repository is an out-of-the-box Obsidian Vault template designed to help people new to Obsidian quickly set up a complete, maintainable Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system.

I’ve been using Obsidian for nearly three years, and before that, OneNote was my primary note-taking tool. Thanks to AI tools, getting started with Obsidian today is much easier than it was three years ago. If you had to hand-craft JavaScript and CSS from scratch, it would really turn off a lot of people, especially beginners or those unfamiliar with management systems. In my personal experience, though, Obsidian is by far the best and most promising note-taking app on the market. So, to recommend it to more people, this article will present an out-of-the-box Obsidian Vault template based on my long-term practice and continuously optimized repository structure. I hope newcomers can avoid the hassle of configuring plugins from zero — just download and open it to get a complete knowledge management system, and gradually build their own Second Brain.

Design Philosophy

This repository uses PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) proposed by Tiago Forte as the core framework for knowledge management. Unlike traditional topic-based classification, PARA emphasizes an “action-oriented” way of organizing.

• Projects: Things that have clear goals and deadlines and need to be completed. For example:

  • Graduation thesis
  • Mathematical modeling competition
  • IELTS preparation When these projects end, they are archived to Archive.

• Areas: Long-term areas of responsibility with no clear end date. For example:

  • Reading
  • Health management
  • Financial management
  • Language learning Areas focus more on your ongoing growth rather than one-time completion.

• Resources: Mainly used to store knowledge, materials, and reference information. They can be organized by topic, or you can set up a temporary inbox to collect information and later file it into topics related to your Areas. For example:

  • Technical notes
  • Learning materials
  • Obsidian configuration This is more like your own knowledge base (Second Brain), and you can later integrate AI to help digest the knowledge.

• Archive: All completed or no-longer-maintained content goes into Archive, keeping your current workspace clean and tidy.

Of course, knowledge management is only one part of life. PARA answers the question “Where should knowledge live?”. But much of our life revolves around “time”, such as:

• Daily diary
• Monthly reviews
• Yearly planning
• Habit tracking
• Time management

These things naturally have a temporal dimension.

Therefore, this repository introduces Periodic Notes as the time dimension of the whole system. All Daily, Monthly, and Yearly Notes are stored together in 00PeriodicNotes.

Periodic Notes answers the other question: “When did things happen?” — it provides the time dimension.

💡 Why combine PARA with Periodic Notes?

This is the core design idea of this repository. PARA and Periodic Notes are not replacements for each other — they complement each other.

They manage two different dimensions:

• Spatial dimension (PARA): Where does knowledge belong?
• Temporal dimension (Periodic Notes): When was knowledge created?

For example:

Today I read a book:

• The reading record belongs to the Reading Area
• The reading happened on the Daily Note

I complete a project:

• Project materials belong to Projects
• The daily progress is recorded in the Daily Note

This way, whether you look from the angle of knowledge classification or time review, you can quickly find the corresponding content.

Repository Structure

.
├── .obsidian            # Obsidian configuration
├── 00PeriodicNotes      # Time dimension (daily, weekly, monthly notes, etc.)
├── 01Projects           # Projects
├── 02Areas              # Long-term areas
├── 03Resources          # Resource library
├── 04Archives           # Archive
├── 🏠 Home.md           # Dashboard home page
└── README.md

The workflow of the entire Vault follows:

Home → Periodic Notes → PARA

Repository Features

Full_view

Compared to an ordinary Obsidian Vault, this template focuses more on actual hands-on experience. It includes the following core modules:

🏠 Home Dashboard

This is the entry point of the entire Vault, generated by the 【Homepage】 plugin. The content is editable, and the plugin can pin it as the homepage layout. It mainly provides a 【Statistics Dashboard, Quick Navigation, and Recent Activity page entry】.

The schedule for 【Important Days】 is maintained in the “00PeriodicNotes/ImportantDates” file. Just add or edit important events and dates in that file, and the homepage will automatically adjust the display. Expired items will no longer be shown.

Home

⏳ Schedule Management (2026.md)

This page mainly shows: yearly plan, monthly tasks, and schedule overview. Among them:

【Yearly Plan】 is implemented with a mermaid diagram, editable directly on the page.

Under 【Monthly Tasks】 is the 【Habit Tracker】, implemented with JS and CSS, with data sourced from the Daily Note. The four main modules rely on the Tasks and Columns plugins and can be edited directly on the page. When you need a template for a new month, switch to “Source Mode” in the top-right corner, copy the template month, and paste it into the new month. For the 【Habit Tracker】, just update the month information in the code.

【Schedule Overview】 is a calendar view of the current month’s to-do list, implemented with custom JS and CSS snippets.

Schedule Dashboard

Habit_tracker

📚 Reading Management

This is a complete Reading Workflow, located in “02Areas/01Reading/00Reading”. This page mainly shows:

• Reading statistics
• Book display

It updates automatically via Dataview. In daily use, you only need to add/edit reading note files in “02Areas/01Reading” — perfect for long-term reading management.

Of course, this logic can easily be reused in other Areas, such as film/music archive management.

Reading

📝 Template Management

This repository already includes the 【Templater】 plugin, and template mapping has been set up for the common folders 【00PeriodicNotes】 and 【02Areas】. For example: the daily note template — TP01_Diary, and the book note template — TP02_Reading. Simply modify the template documents to suit your own habits.

Template.png

Plugin Description

To ensure the template works properly, this repository depends on the following community plugins.

After downloading this repository, Obsidian will automatically detect the missing plugins. After installing them, click Trust author and enable plugins and you can use most features of this template directly — no extra configuration required.

💡 How to Install Plugins

1. Open Settings → Community Plugins
2. Turn off Safe Mode (if not already off)
3. Click Browse
4. Search for and install the plugins above
5. Go back to the plugin list and enable all plugins
6. When opening the Vault for the first time, click Trust author and enable plugins to complete the configuration

⚠️: If some Dashboard, reading statistics, or automation features do not display properly, first make sure Dataview and Templater are enabled. These two plugins are the core dependencies of this template.

Installation Guide

1. Download the repository
   • Click Code → Download ZIP
   • Unzip it locally
2. Open Obsidian
   • Choose Open folder as vault
   • Open the downloaded folder
3. Install and enable plugins
   • Install the required community plugins from the plugin list in the README
   • After installation, click Trust author and enable plugins
4. Start using it
   • Click “Manage workspace layouts” on the left, open the Default layout, and you’ll enter the Dashboard to start exploring the entire Vault.