Projects

What is a project?

settle understands your Zettelkasten in terms of projects. A project is any directory that contains at least one note, i.e. at least one Markdown file.

The catch is that only the root of your Zettelkasten directory and only the direct subdirectories it contains can count as projects. That is to say, if the root of your Zettelkasten is at ~/docs/zettelkasten, then ~/docs/zettelkasten/myproject can be a project, but ~/docs/zettelkasten/myproject/mysubproject cannot. Likewise, since ~/docs isn't a subdirectory of your Zettelkasten's root, it can't can't count as a project.

The reason for this design choice is that, with subprojects like this, it would become a hierarchical nightmare extremely fast.

NOTE: the root of the Zettelkasten can be referenced by two names: "main", or an empty string ("").

The role of projects

Projects provide only a formal separation between notes, since any note can reference any other note, regardless of where they are.

Your most basic projects are the root of the Zettelkasten and your inbox - the former should contain permanent notes, the other should contain temporary notes.

It's up to you how you use your ability to create and manage projects. My advice would be to use as few as possible. Some projects, such as having, say, a literature project for literature notes, would be useful. Aside from that, use-cases like writing about game's lore, or writing a book's chapter, or using projects for anything that isn't and can never be related to the rest of your Zettelkasten, come to mind.