Starter Vault

The starter vault is a pre-configured Obsidian vault with templates, Bases, and example content. Clone it to get a working Taskdn setup in minutes.

Installation

1. Clone the starter vault:

   git clone https://github.com/dannysmith/tdn-obsidian-starter-vault my-tasks
   cd my-tasks
   rm -rf .git README.md

2. Open the folder as a vault in Obsidian

3. When prompted, Trust the vault to enable plugins

4. Go to Settings → Files and links and ensure Wikilinks are enabled

5. Go to Settings → Core plugins and enable Bases and Templates

Vault Structure

• Directoryareas/

  • Overview.md (embedded bases view)
  • Side Projects.md
• Directoryprojects/

  • Overview.md (embedded bases view)
  • Japan Trip 2025.md
  • Learn Rust.md
  • Website Redesign.md
• Directorytasks/

  • Overview.md (embedded bases view)
  • Directoryarchive/ (completed & dropped tasks)

    • …
  • update-homepage.md
  • book-flights.md
  • …
• Directorytemplates/

  • Directorybases/

    • Tasks.base
    • Projects.base
    • Areas.base
    • AreaProjects.base
  • Task.md
  • Project.md
  • Area.md
  • Trip Project.md
• example-note.md (demonstrates plugin features)
• getting-started.md
• CLAUDE.md

Templates

Create new tasks, projects, and areas using Obsidian’s Templates plugin. Each template includes the required frontmatter fields with sensible defaults.

Task Template — Creates a task with ready status, today’s date for created-at and updated-at, and empty fields for due, scheduled, defer-until, projects, and area.

Project Template — Creates a project with planning status, today’s date for start-date, and sections for Overview and Next Steps.

Area Template — Creates an area with active status and a prompt to define what “doing well” looks like.

Trip Project Template — A more detailed template showing how to create project-specific templates with pre-filled checklists and sections for itinerary, transport, accommodation, and packing.

To use a template, create a new file in the appropriate directory, then run the Insert template command (Cmd/Ctrl + P → “Insert template”).

Bases

Obsidian Bases let you create database-like views of your notes. The starter vault includes pre-configured bases for tasks, projects, and areas.

Included Bases

Tasks.base — Views for all tasks, filtered by status:

• All Tasks
• Active (excludes done, dropped, icebox; respects defer-until)
• Inbox
• Ready
• In Progress
• Blocked
• Overdue

Projects.base — Views for projects by status:

• All Projects
• Active (in-progress, planning, ready)
• On Hold (paused, blocked)

Areas.base — Views for areas:

• All Areas
• Active (excludes archived)

AreaProjects.base — For embedding in area documents to show that area’s projects

Overview Pages

Each directory contains an Overview.md file with embedded bases. Open tasks/Overview.md to see a filterable table of all your tasks. Switch between views using the tabs.

Embed a base view in any note using:

![[Tasks.base]]
![[Tasks.base#Ready]]

Plugin Configuration

Taskdn Plugin

Go to Settings → Taskdn and configure:

Setting	Recommended Value
Tasks directory	tasks
Exclude patterns	Overview.md

This prevents the Overview files from appearing as tasks.

Folder Notes (Optional)

If you use the Folder Notes plugin, configure it to use Overview.md as the folder note name. This makes the Overview page open automatically when you click a folder in the file explorer.

Web Clipper Template

If you use the Obsidian Web Clipper, you can create a template that saves web pages directly as inbox tasks. The clipped content goes in the task body, ready for processing later.

To add the template, open the Web Clipper settings and import this JSON:

{
  "schemaVersion": "0.1.0",
  "name": "Taskdn Task",
  "behavior": "create",
  "noteContentFormat": "Clipped from: {{url}}\n\n{{content}}",
  "properties": [
    {
      "name": "title",
      "value": "{{title}}",
      "type": "text"
    },
    {
      "name": "status",
      "value": "inbox",
      "type": "text"
    },
    {
      "name": "created-at",
      "value": "{{date}}",
      "type": "date"
    },
    {
      "name": "updated-at",
      "value": "{{date}}",
      "type": "date"
    }
  ],
  "triggers": [],
  "noteNameFormat": "{{title|safe_name}}",
  "path": "tasks"
}

See the CLI documentation for other ways to capture tasks, including from the command line and via AI assistants.