About this Obsidian template

This vault was built and tested to help small teams stay organised, focused, and flexible without spending all day managing a system.

This is an independent, unofficial template. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by the Obsidian team or Dynalist Inc.

At its core, it combines an adapted PARA-style structure with dashboards and automations so work stays visible and easy to maintain.

How it’s organised

The vault is organised around a few stable areas:

• Deliverables (Projects) – outcomes you’re building (pitch deck, onboarding, hiring pipeline, new landing page)
• Hubs (Areas) – stable focus areas that don’t “finish” (Product, Marketing, Fundraising, Ops)
• Resources – reference material (articles, tools, internal docs)
• Archive – anything inactive, completed, or parked for later

There’s also a lightweight capture layer (inspired by the Zettelkasten method) so you can save things fast without breaking flow – and sort when have a moment.

How it works

The system has been built so you do not need to think about organisation. Everything has a place. And if it doesn’t – then you can customise.

It has been designed around

• An adapted PARA framework: a folder hierarchy to keep it simple. “Projects” were renamed to Deliverables because it keeps the system more outcome-focused and less ambiguity over what is a project, what is not.
• Dashboards: the overview page, where you have a clear view of everything connected to project or hub.
• Capture: fast entry points so you can save action items, experiment ideas, opportunities to explore in the future, scrap notes, useful links, even the beautiful branding of a random company.
• Automation: ready-made scripts and templates that keep metadata consistent and updated, and notes correctly filed – use the buttons rather than reorganise files.
• Backlog: one place to list tasks, but they don’t become tasks until you commit them.

The navigation sidebar (your vault’s home)

When you open the vault, the sidebar acts as your home base. It helps you:

• Keep today’s priority visible
• Search quickly across your notes
• Use quick capture to log fleeting thoughts, save articles, links, recommendations you were told into the right place
• Jump into active Hubs, Deliverables, and Resources
• Create new Hubs or Deliverables via buttons (folders, templates, and queries are created automatically)
• Add new notes and choose where it should live so it stays organised
• See recently modified and created notes (useful when you can’t remember what you named something)
• Optionally view Google Calendar (or any other key webpage) via an embedded view

Hub and deliverable dashboards

Each Hub and Deliverable has its own dashboard. This is how everything stays connected automatically.

Using the dashboard buttons creates notes in the right places and keeps links consistent, so nothing gets lost and your queries stay reliable.

• Hub dashboards show linked notes, resources, deliverables, and backlog items related to that hub.
• Deliverable dashboards show progress, linked documents/resources, and the tasks tied to that deliverable.

A simple way to capture tasks and prioritise work

The backlog is a dumping ground by design – a place you can offload thoughts quickly without getting overwhelmed.

From there, you “commit” items by turning them into:

• a task note, or
• a live deliverable, or
• an experiment you want to run

Only committed work appears in the active task views.

When you create a task, the capture flow ask (at a high-level) for impact, urgency, and required time and generates a priority score. That makes it easy to filter tasks by priority score and focus on what matters most.

If you prefer another task manager, the system can also run alongside it. With the Local REST API plugin (and a bit of technical setup), you can sync tasks – but it’s optional. The vault works fully on its own.

You have one central list, that is then filtered and manipulated by what you need to view.

Automated archive system

When something’s done, archive it – without losing access.

You can run the archive command from a note or dashboard and the vault:

• tags it for archive
• moves it into the Archive area
• preserves the folder structure
• prefixes the filename so it’s clearly an older/inactive item

You can archive a whole Deliverable folder too by archiving on the dashboard page, and the system will move everything cleanly while keeping metadata consistent.

The Team hub

A Team Hub is included to get you started. In it I have added:

• A work log
• Internal resources folder
• Reflections
• Team meetings

The work log acts like a memory of what you created and changed – helpful when you remember “I made that thing” but can’t find it. When you make a new doc, add a resource, create a project. Then it saves there.

Planning and reflection

Planning and reflection are easy to skip when you’re busy, but they’re what keep a team aligned.

The vault includes lightweight templates for:

• Weekly reflections: review what happened, what got committed, wins, and what matters next.
• Quarterly reflections: zoom out, review progress and metrics, and set priorities. Quarterly plans can flow into monthly/weekly planning if you want.

Customise it to how you work

Finally, it is good to know that this setup is very flexible, and completely customisable.

You can rename hubs, tweak prompts, change labels/emojis, edit templates, adjust YAML keys, or update styles. If you want to make big structural changes, doing a vault-wide find/replace in VS Code is often the cleanest way – just be careful not to accidentally overwrite real note content.

This vault is meant to be a strong foundation: structure stays lightweight, work stays visible, and the system stays adaptable as your startup evolves.

Buy the template here.