My new zettlekasten workflow with Remnote and Obsidian

Workflows and Education
#1

Due to issues with export etc, I started exploring other ways to have a permanent silo of my notes while still harnessing the wonderful features that Remnote offers.
I have also moved on from my earlier zettlekasten workflow with Diigo.

My current workflow is this:

  1. Select content I like from webpages and get the markdown for that using extension like MarkDownload or Obsidian Clipper.
  2. Create a zettlekasten note in an Obsidian vault. Paste the markdown there with the source url.
  3. Create a link to this zettlekasten to other parent note.
  4. Inspired by Remnote’s content descriptor framework, I rewrite the content where possible into many short paragraphs with a small question preceding it (that will in course become Remnote’s frontend card).
  5. When I’m ready to transfer the content to Remnote, I replace, (either through a script or through a word processor) the question marks after each heading with question mark and double colon.
    I also remove any preceding hash symbols from headings.
  6. I import this into remnote.
  7. I now just have manually indent where needed. Also put code into codeblocks as that doesn’t seem to happen automatically in remnote (whether import from a markdown or from jupyter notebook).
  8. I further personalize the content in Remnote with Remnote specific features like image occlusion or portals. (As of now, it is concerning that I am unable to export backup with these changes, but it gives me peace of mind that my main raw content is siloed elsewhere locally until the issues with Remnote export are ironed out.)
  9. I continue to use my earlier workflow of voice dictation and pencil writing in iPad to make any changes.
  10. I then proceed to use the spaced repetition tool on these zettlekasten rems.

I eagerly invite comments, feeback or recommendations for my nascent evolving workflow.

What I’d like in the future is to have a IFFT-esque way of automatically updating my local markdown silo with any content changes in corresponding Remnote Rems, and possibly vice versa.
I’d also like to directly import from my jupyter notebooks (as Markdown) which currently has unresolved issues with fenced code blocks not being created.

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#2

I’d love to see the scripts and word processing steps exactly, either here or on awesome remnote. Kudos for struggling on with Markdown despite RemNote’s “special” text formatting.

#3

Just a rough python script I’ve put together (see below) for replacement of “?” with “?::”, and removal of the header markdown between the sentences.
You can call this script via a bash script to process multiple obsidian zettlekasten files simultaneously.

Note: Following that, I have to do manual editing for indenting and code fences. Hopefully, in future Remnote will process the markdown codeblocks.

Input: Obsidian zettelkasten markdown notes that I have formulated as ##heading-concept?-##heading-descriptor-codes format.
Output: Remove the hashtags and add double colon to the question mark, and save as a md file.
Note: If you want to keep the hashtags, remove the regex bit. In this case, just the double colon will be added next to question mark, and the rest of your markdown will be pasted as such.

import re
def convertQuestioMarktoRemnoteSeperator(in , out):

''' Pass input and output markdown files to this function. 
   It will add :: after the ?. Also remove hashtags'''

    with open(in, "r") as inputfile, open(out, "w") as outputfile:
           for line in inputfile.readlines():
                if not line.startswith("#") and line.endswith("?\n"):
                   line = line.strip() + "::"
                   outputfile.write(line)
                else:
                    line = re.sub(r'[#]',"",line)
                    outputfile.write(line)
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#4

Probably a silly question, but have you looked into https://github.com/Pseudonium/Obsidian_to_Anki at all? Wonder if it might be helpful to keep all these app to app conversion things centralised.

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#5

No, I haven’t looked into that tool. Thank you very much for the link. Shall explore the package.

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by

Wonder if it might be helpful to keep all these app to app conversion things centralised.

You mean one tool that does both anki and remnote conversions based on a flag?

#6

That’s right, the tool I linked seems to process markdown (be it Obsidian or Neuracache) to Anki, I’d love to see it process markdown to RemNote and Anki to markdown and so on. Not sure what the documentation for RemNote export/import is. Any insight, @hannesfrank?

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