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vimwiki
vimwiki
Vim Script2013–2025
vimwiki / vimwiki

vimwiki

Personal Wiki for Vim

66Distinct people
83Mentions
4Explicit recommenders
9.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Personal Wiki for Vim

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

Seems really cool. I love Vim + Markdown as well. If you haven't heard of vimwiki yet, check it out. Right in line with what you're working on. https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki

freeplay used a recommendation phrase. 4 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year83 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-07-03 20:20:58 UTC to 2025-05-18 20:20:40 UTC.

051015202013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 2 submissions, 4 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 0 submissions, 11 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 0 submissions, 11 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 1 submissions, 9 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 18 mentions; 2 submissions, 16 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 2 submissions, 4 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC624
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11011
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11011
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1019
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC18216
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC624
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
中文 Intro Screenshots Installation Prerequisites VIM Packages Pathogen Vim-Plug Vundle Lazy Basic Markup Lists Key Bindings Commands Changing Wiki Syntax Getting Help Helping VimWiki Wiki License Introduction VimWiki is a personal wiki for Vim -- a number of linked text files that have their own syntax highlighting. See the VimWiki Wiki for an example website built with VimWiki! If you are interested in contributing see this section. With VimWiki, you can: Organize notes and ideas Manage to-do lists Write documentation Maintain a diary Export everything to HTML To do a quick start, press <Leader>ww (default is \ww) to go to your index wiki file. By default, it is located in ~/vimwiki/index.wiki. See :h vimwiki_list for registering a different path/wiki. Feed it with the following example: = My knowledge base = * Tasks -- things to be done _yesterday_!!! * Project Gutenberg -- good books are power. * Scratchpad -- various temporary stuff. Place your cursor on Tasks and press Enter to create a link. Once pressed, Tasks will become [[Tasks]] -- a VimWiki link. Press Enter again to open it. Edit the file, save it, and then press Backspace to jump back to your index. A VimWiki link can be constructed from more than one word. Just visually select the words to be linked and press Enter. Try it, with Project Gutenberg. The result should look something like: = My knowledge base = * [[Tasks]] -- things to be done _yesterday_!!! * [[Project Gutenberg]] -- good books are power. * Scratchpad -- various temporary stuff. Screenshots Installation VimWiki has been tested on Vim >= 7.3. It may work on older versions but will not be officially supported. It is known to work on NeoVim, although it is likely to have NeoVim-specific bugs. Prerequisites Make sure you have these settings in your vimrc file: set nocompatible filetype plugin on syntax on Without them, VimWiki will not work properly. Installation using Vim packages (since Vim 7.4.1528) git clone https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki.git ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start/vimwiki # to generate documentation i.e. ':h vimwiki' vim -c 'helptags ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start/vimwiki/doc' -c quit Notes: See :h helptags for issues with installing the documentation. For general information on vim packages see :h packages. Installation using Pathogen cd ~/.vim mkdir bundle cd bundle git clone https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki.git Installation using Vim-Plug Add the following to the plugin-configuration in your vimrc: Plug 'vimwiki/vimwiki' Then run :PlugInstall. Installation using Vundle Add Plugin 'vimwiki/vimwiki' to your vimrc file and run: vim +PluginInstall +qall Installation using Lazy Add repository within require('lazy').setup call in your vimrc (or for plugins file ie. /lua/plugins/, do the same within a return{} statement). If you are unfamiliar with lua, note that the brackets {, } need a closing comma (},) if you are adding this to an existing function like the .setup call. { 'vimwiki/vimwiki' } Example with options (Change syntax to markdown): { 'vimwiki/vimwiki', init = function() vim.g.vimwiki_path = '~/vimwiki/' vim.g.vimwiki_syntax = 'markdown' vim.g.vimwiki_ext = 'md' end, } Manual Install Download the zip archive and extract it in ~/.vim/bundle/ Then launch Vim, run :Helptags and then :help vimwiki to verify it was installed. Basic Markup = Header1 = == Header2 == === Header3 === *bold* -- bold text _italic_ -- italic text [[wiki link]] -- wiki link [[wiki link|description]] -- wiki link with description Lists * bullet list item 1 - bullet list item 2 - bullet list item 3 * bullet list item 4 * bullet list item 5 * bullet list item 6 * bullet list item 7 - bullet list item 8 - bullet list item 9 1. numbered list item 1 2. numbered list item 2 a) numbered list item 3 b) numbered list item 4 For other syntax elements, see :h vimwiki-syntax Todo lists - [.] Partially completed item with sub-tasks - [X] Completed sub-task - [ ] Incomplete sub-task - [ ] Other incomplete sub-task - [ ] Incomplete item Key bindings Normal mode Note: your terminal may prevent capturing some of the default bindings listed below. See :h vimwiki-local-mappings for suggestions for alternative bindings if you encounter a problem. Basic key bindings <Leader>ww -- Open default wiki index file. <Leader>wt -- Open default wiki index file in a new tab. <Leader>ws -- Select and open wiki index file. <Leader>wd -- Delete wiki file you are in. <Leader>wr -- Rename wiki file you are in. <Enter> -- Follow/Create wiki link. <Shift-Enter> -- Split and follow/create wiki link. <Ctrl-Enter> -- Vertical split and follow/create wiki link. <Backspace> -- Go back to parent(previous) wiki link. <Tab> -- Find next wiki link. <Shift-Tab> -- Find previous wiki link. Advanced key bindings Refer to the complete documentation at :h vimwiki-mappings to see many more bindings. Commands :Vimwiki2HTML -- Convert current wiki link to HTML. :VimwikiAll2HTML -- Convert all your wiki links to HTML. :help vimwiki-commands -- List all commands. :help vimwiki -- General vimwiki help docs. Changing Wiki Syntax VimWiki currently ships with 3 syntaxes: VimWiki (default), Markdown (markdown), and MediaWiki (media). Of these, the native VimWiki syntax is best supported, followed by Markdown. No promises are made for MediaWiki. NOTE: Only the default syntax ships with a built-in HTML converter. For Markdown or MediaWiki see :h vimwiki-option-custom_wiki2html. Some examples and 3rd party tools are available here. If you would prefer to use either Markdown or MediaWiki syntaxes, set the following option in your .vimrc: let g:vimwiki_list = [{'path': '~/vimwiki/', \ 'syntax': 'markdown', 'ext': 'md'}] This option will treat all markdown files in your system as part of vimwiki (check set filetype?). Add let g:vimwiki_global_ext = 0 to your .vimrc to
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

83 sources
> The most commonly used PKMS or note-taking apps today are Notion, Obsidian, Evernote and Logseq. The problem is that PKMS come and go. Uh oh. I wouldn't use those. Of course they come and go - they're made by companies. > Could you see yourself using your note-taking app you use today in 30 years? Yes of course. Otherwise I wouldn't be using it. > Do you ever have concerns around the privacy of your notes? Not really. > Are you spending more time setting up your notes system rather than managing your notes? No. > What does an effective and timeless PKMS even look like? I use VimWiki[0]. There's a possibility it will go away, but I doubt it. There's a possibility both vim and neovim will go away, but I doubt it. It stores everything as Markdown files. Should Markdown ever go away, it's all still very readable plain text files. I use UTF-
Read the rest
8. Perhaps that'll go away at some point? I version everything with git, I doubt git will fully go away, but I'm ok migrating to a different VCS if need be. I bet the longevity of my setup is way better than the longevity of a backend written in TypeScript, backed by a SQL database, running in Docker, based on a CMS I've never heard of (Directus). [0]: https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
In Ditching Obsidian and building my own
I use vimwiki[1] just for this "diary" functionality, with different days in different files. Can browse the directory in netrw to find a day's notes, and I have scripts that let me archive old stuff. I tend to put an "x" in front of completed lines (and move uncompleted lines forward to new days) so it is easy to detect and archive unactionable or "completed" files. [1]: https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
In Calendar.txt
No, Neorg does not use the same markup as Org-mode. They use their own specification that is specifically designed to be different from Org-mode spec. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvim-neorg/norg-specs/main... Furthermore, each item you have listed as a benefit to Org-mode is in fact capable of being done in Markdown via plugins for neovim, and probably other markdown editors, like Loqseq, Roamresearch, or Obisidian, much in the same way you speak of plugins that interface with .org docs. https://github.com/wthollingsworth/pomodoro.nvim https://github.com/Myzel394/easytables.nvim https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki So, my suggestion is that before dismissing a comment regarding a plugin that is unfamiliar to you, is to read its spec, and then try to understand why people would be perhaps dismissive of that tool, especially when it cho
Read the rest
oses to conflict with existing, more popular choices.
In Neorg – organize your life in Neovim
I appreciate the idea of having an org-mode equivalent in Vim, but man do the docs suck for this project. Lots of broken links, very hard to discover how to actually hit the ground running. I hate this trend of having video explainers before having actually functional docs. I have no interest in watching someone fumble around a Youtube video when I could alternatively just Ctrl+F a docs page and find the information I need. For anyone interested, there are alternatives that are more Markdown compatible. Vimwiki, as an example, is great. https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
In Neorg – organize your life in Neovim
What, we're talking about wikis and vim, and not mentioning vimwiki? https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki I tried a whole bunch of personal wikis over the years (I see Zim has been mentioned, that's one of the ones I remember trying) and this is the only one that stuck. The github page shows some basic markdown, but it also handles nested checklists (parent nodes can be partially checked off) and understands tables (automatically fixing spacing so columns stay aligned). It can also render to HTML (though I don't use that feature) and has a whole bunch of other stuff too.
In Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash
Two years ago, I did nanowrimo in Vim with a whole suite of plugins: - https://github.com/preservim/vim-pencil - https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim.git - https://github.com/junegunn/limelight.vim.git - https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki It was fun, and the setup is almost identical to iA Writer which I appreciate. I even had it all on my phone with Termux! Last year I just did it in Markdown in VSCode in "zen mode" which also worked pretty well. It was definitely easier to setup than Vim and had better highlighting of bold/italics/etc.
In Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing
mpalczewski·Apr 1, 2022Recommendation phrase
I switched away from Workflowy to a plain text file format. Load times are quicker, navigation is quicker, can use keyboard only without a mouse, the UX can keep up with the pace of my thinking. I prefer vimwiki for this purpose https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki You can get plugins that sync it to a git repository. I love this. There's also task warrior plugins, though I haven't figured out how that would for me, seems to get away from simple text files at that point.
In Show HN: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists
I'd say that this product (https://kinopio.club/) is an implementation of the ideas of Zettelkasten[0], or at least shares a lot of DNA. However, lots and lots of things "are" Zettelkasten, or can work like Zettelkasten, or incorporate ideas of Zettelkasten. Examples of things which can be used like a Zettelkasten include: - Org mode for Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Org-mode - Vimwiki for Vim https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki - Notational Velocity, an OS X note-taking application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notational_Velocity - Obsidian, a cross platform personal knowledgebase where its "DB format" is folders full of Markdown files https://obsidian.md/ - A folder full of text files which you open in your favorite text editor can even work like a Zettelkasten (grep helps in this case though) [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z
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In How I Build

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