Note: The site and the app are work-in-progress.

Zettelkasten, the endlessly scalable web of notes

The zettelkasten is known for its scalability, simplicity and flexibility. By connecting ideas over time, new ideas emerge. The zettelkasten was originally maintained on paper, paper has the great advantage that it can be picked up, laid out, organized, reordered, stored, etc.

The large downside of paper, of course, is that it takes up space. Like archive cabinets, the original approach to maintaining a large zettelkasten has been lost. Instead, we now have various kinds of apps that help us manage our zettel-notes (oxymoron?)

Zettelgraph, the visual companion to your zettelkasten

With the digital apps overtaking the traditional paper zettelkasten, the advantages of paper have been lost. The Zettelgraph is the digitial answer to paper advantages.

For now, refer to the video above as an introduction to what the zettelgraph can do.

Goals

No-nonsense, deeply integrated user-interface

The app has a clear purpose, browsing notes. Modern user-interfaces tend to clutter their design with nested menus, buttons, complicated filters, features, etc. This app aims to be both truly intuitive as well as powerful and fast. The notes are always there, search is a first-class feature, the notes.

Deeply personal and private

The zettelkasten is a deeply personal and organic system. Each graph will look different, and your tagging habbits as well as goals for using the zettelkasten will differ completely per-person. The Zettelgraph aims to be customizable to both your workflow as well as the structure of your graph. This feature especially is still in the design phase, but the aims are that your graph will be customizable based on your preferences.

Structural personalization
  • Make notes with the `#index` tag orange and big, or make them black and huge!
  • Hide connected or unconnected notes
  • Visualize the creation dates of your graph with a color gradient (this is visible in the video, goes from dark brown to green)
Workflow personalization
  • Save common searches
  • Save different layouts. The nodes can be moved and rearranged, so when working on different topics, projects, tasks and articles, you can use your own favorite layout.
  • ..more?

Available everywhere

By integrating with cloud sync services such as Dropbox, Onedrive, Box and Google Drive, the Zettelgraph will be kept up-to-date at all times.

With personal comes private

Some of you use the zettelkasten to satiate your curiosity, others are scientists, enthusiasts, scientists, doctors, engineers, academics. Regardless of your reason to use the zettelgraph, the graph will need access to your notes. Our aim is to integrate with various cloud-services such as Dropbox, Google, Box.com, etc, and encrypt the notes in our database, so that only the owner can access the notes, not even the developer.

Inspiration

Pioneers such as Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart introduced the concepts of the web and personal computer as we know them today. The Zettelgraph has been inspired primarily by a loose reinterpretation of Ted Nelson's ideas of visual connections, Bret Victor's brilliantly clean and powerful user interface design and Edward Tufte's principles around showing all data at once, meaningfully and clearly.

Of course, Niklas Luhmann, the inventor of the Zettelkasten concept, as well as Sorens arken for the "how to take smart notes" book, introducing me to the concept of the zettelkasten in the first place.