VIM plugin that supports my planning and note taking workflow.
This plugin provides a handful of helper functions to organize a directory of
notes. The general setup is that there are at least 2 different directories.
One for generic notes (by default notes/) and one for daily notes (by
default dailies/). This workflow is heavily inspired by tools like
Obsidian and NotePlan and should be in large parts
compatible.
Helper functions are by default mapped to commands but not mapped to any keybindings to not clash with any existing mappings:
command! PlanDaily :call plan#OpenDailyNote()
command! PlanNote :call plan#OpenNote()
command! PlanMarkDone :call plan#MarkDone()
command! PlanMarkCanceled :call plan#MarkCanceled()
command! PlanMigrateToToday :call plan#MigrateToToday()
command! -nargs=1 PlanImportAsset :call plan#ImportAsset(<q-args>)
vim-plan uses the conceal feature to show todos in a visually different way
to make it easier to quickly scan notes for todos. It suppports 4 different
states of todos:
- [ ] an open task
- [x] a completed task
- [-] a cancelled task
- [>] a moved task
which will look like this as long as the cursor isn't on the line:
⭕️ an open task
✅ a completed task
❎ a cancelled task
🔜 a moved task
This only works if vim is compiled with conceal support and utf-8 encoding.
This is how it looks like in MacVim:
The plugin provides a command :PlanFindTodos that uses :lgrep to find the
pattern - [ ] in the dailies and notes directories and shows the results in
a location window for the buffer to select and jump to. I'm using it with
rg via the following .vimrc
setting, to show me the newest daily notes first:
" set rg as grep program
set grepprg=rg\ --vimgrep\ --no-heading\ --smart-case\ --sortr=path
Notes are saved periodically when the cursor is idle (in both normal and insert mode) and also on leaving a buffer.
When opening a file that doesn't exist yet, vim-plan reads a template folder
to figure out if there is a template set for the file type. This is very
similar to how vim-stencil works. Valid template files are
daily or note.
When reading those templates in vim-plan will replace the following template variables inline:
%%DATE%%with the current date of the format mm/dd/yyyy%%DATE_8601%%with the current date of the format yyyy/mm/dd%%WEEKDAY%%with the name of weekday%%WEEKNUMBER%%with the number of the week%%YEAR%%with the current year yyyy%%MONTH%%with the name of the current month
I complement this workflow with a couple of shell commands I run from a Makefile in my notes repository:
TODAY := $(shell date "+%Y%m%d")
TODAY_ATTACHMENTS := ./dailies/$(TODAY)_attachments
$(TODAY_ATTACHMENTS):
install -d $@
# this is run from Hazel on macos to sync screenshots to a daily attachments
# folder for my daily note
.PHONY: sync-screenshots-to-today
sync-screenshots-to-today: $(TODAY_ATTACHMENTS)
mv ~/Desktop/Screenshot*.png $<
# this is useful to find images I imported but never linked in any notes
.PHONY: find-unlinked-images
find-unlinked-images:
@find dailies -type f -name "*.png" | sort | while read img ; do grep -q "$$(basename "$$img")" -R dailies notes || echo "Image: $$img not linked in any notes" ; done
# get a list of all open todos
.PHONY: find-todos
find-todos:
@rg --sort path '\- \[ \]' dailies notes
# get a list of notes tagged with something (#fr in this case)
.PHONY: recent-fr-tasks
recent-fr-tasks:
@rg --sort path '#fr' dailies notes
# generate tags, see below for ctag definitions I use
.PHONY: tags
tags:
ctags -R .
I use a small addition to the normal ctags definitions mostly to be able to tab complete @usernames in vim:
% cat .ctags.d/md.ctags
--langdef=markdowntags
--languages=markdowntags
--langmap=markdowntags:.md
--kinddef-markdowntags=t,tag,tags
--mline-regex-markdowntags=/(^|[[:space:]])@(\w\S*)/\2/t/{mgroup=1}
In my notes repo I have a nightly action that updates tags which makes it really easy to have completion of notes with about a day or so delay:
name: update-tags
on:
workflow_dispatch:
schedule:
# run every weekday morning
- cron: '30 3 * * 1-5'
jobs:
update:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: dependencies
run: sudo apt-get install universal-ctags
- name: generate tags
run: make tags
- name: commit and push changes
run: |
git config user.name Github Actions
git config user.email [email protected]
git add tags
git commit --allow-empty -m "update tags"
git push
There is a commandline tool plan which provides some additional
support tooling mostly around automation. For example I run this Action every weekday morning to
prep my daily note with some information:
name: daily-prep
on:
workflow_dispatch:
schedule:
# run every weekday morning
- cron: '30 5 * * 1-5'
jobs:
update:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: populate daily note
run: make prepare-the-day
env:
ISSUES_TOKEN_GITHUB: ${{ secrets.ISSUES_TOKEN_GITHUB }}
- name: commit and push changes
run: |
git config user.name Github Actions
git config user.email [email protected]
git add dailies
git commit -m "create daily note"
git push
There are a couple of variables that can be set to customize mostly file locations:
" base dor for all notes
let g:PlanBaseDir = get(g:, 'PlanBaseDir', $HOME . "/.plan")
" template dir relative to base dir
let g:PlanTemplateDir = get(g:, 'PlanTemplatePath', "templates")
" daily notes dir relative to base dir
let g:PlanDailiesDir = get(g:, 'PlanTemplatePath', "dailies")
" generic notes dir relative to base dir
let g:PlanNotesDir = get(g:, 'PlanTemplatePath', "notes")
" allow user to append a title to default note file name
" set to 0 or omit to disable adding a title to notes
let g:PlanPromptForTitle = get(g:, 'PlanPromptForTitle', 1)
" the name of the directory relative to the current file to import assets to
let g:PlanAssetsDirectory = get(g:, 'PlanAssetsDirectory', "assets")