My YouTube Workflow in Obsidian with Templater, Kanban, and Excalidraw

A tightly automated Obsidian workflow turns YouTube production into a drag-and-drop Kanban system—complete with auto-created folders, thumbnails, and Excalidraw storyboards—so each new video starts from a consistent structure with minimal manual setup. The core idea is to store every project in its own Obsidian folder, keep large video files out of Obsidian Sync, and use Kanban cards that visually preview each video via an editable thumbnail linked to a storyboard drawing.

On the Kanban board, each published video lives as a card containing a thumbnail image and a link to its storyboard. Moving work through stages is handled by simple Kanban actions like archiving: an “Archive card” command removes the card from the “published” column, and the archived items appear later in a markdown view list. That split matters because opening the Kanban board triggers creation of embedded drawings (including thumbnails), which consumes noticeable resources—so the workflow favors a lighter markdown view when browsing many items.

Creating cards manually is possible but slow. The transcript walks through a laborious process: drag in a thumbnail, convert it into an image block, then link in a separate storyboard file so the card remains clickable and the storyboard content stays accessible. Because the manual approach becomes tedious, the workflow shifts to automation using Obsidian Templater. A single “youtube create” template is launched from daily notes (or any markdown page), prompts for the project name, and then generates the full project scaffold: a project folder, a video subfolder, a thumbnail file, a storyboard file, and a new Kanban card inserted into the “ideas” column.

The automation hinges on a central Templater script that defines two constants at the top: the root folder for the YouTube channel and the filename of the Kanban board. After prompting for the project name, the script checks whether the project folder already exists; if it does, it alerts and stops to prevent duplicates. If not, it creates the folder structure, generates the thumbnail from a dedicated thumbnail template, and then edits the Kanban markdown file by splitting it at the “ideas” section and stitching the new card into the right location.

Two additional templates do the heavy lifting for the visual assets. The thumbnail template uses an explicit 1920×1080 rectangle so exported PNGs match YouTube’s expected aspect and resolution, and it replaces a text placeholder with the project folder name. The storyboard template integrates Excalidraw by automatically updating the embedded file reference to point at the newly created thumbnail. It also includes a key “trick” to keep the storyboard template from being treated as an Excalidraw file that would overwrite its own scripts: it uses a templater-executed front-matter workaround (printing triple dashes) so Excalidraw won’t recognize the template as a drawable document.

In practice, the result is a repeatable pipeline: thumbnails and storyboards are created in the right places, Kanban cards appear in the correct workflow column, and naming conventions stay consistent. The only remaining manual step mentioned is updating Obsidian Sync exclude settings for the generated video folder—something the creator skips during testing because the demo content is deleted afterward. The templates are packaged for reuse so others can adapt the same automation pattern to their own visual knowledge and content workflows in Obsidian with Kanban and Excalidraw.