Obsidian For Content Creators (ft. Projects Plugin)

Obsidian is getting a practical project-management setup for content creators: the Projects plugin lets users organize video ideas as a single, centralized project with multiple synchronized views—table, calendar, board, and gallery—while keeping metadata like status, priority, and due dates editable in place. The payoff is a workflow that behaves like a content pipeline (backlog → up next → uploaded → published) without forcing creators to juggle separate tools.

The setup starts with installing Marcus Olson’s Projects plugin from Obsidian Community Plugins, then opening Projects from the left sidebar or via Command Palette (and optionally assigning a hotkey). From there, creators create a folder structure (e.g., a main channel folder with a “videos” subfolder) and generate a project inside that subfolder. A key design choice is leaving “use data view” off, since enabling it makes project views read-only. Instead, the workflow relies on templates: when new notes are created inside the project, YAML frontmatter drives what fields appear and how views are laid out.

A “new video” template becomes the backbone of planning. The template pre-fills common headers such as status, published, and priority, with backlog items defaulting to a specific priority level (the creator uses a Todoist-like scale where 1 is most important and 4 is least). Notes start as empty except for the applied template, then get filled out as production progresses. The transcript also flags a current limitation: some YAML headers from the template may not populate immediately unless they’re populated in the template itself—though Marcus is said to be addressing it.

To make metadata feel less like paperwork, Obsidian’s native Stacks feature is used to add and edit due dates directly from the project table. Once due dates exist in YAML, the Projects table gains a due-date column, and editing a cell updates the underlying note metadata. Additional fields—like topic and sponsor—appear as columns too, with column order determined by the YAML header order (a feature request exists for drag-and-drop column reordering).

Beyond the table, Projects supports multiple non-destructive views. A calendar view reads due dates from YAML and allows toggling published status straight from the calendar. A board view organizes notes into sections based on a chosen parameter (such as status), functioning like a Kanban board; the transcript notes a missing feature—drag-and-drop between columns with automatic metadata updates—that may be added later. A gallery view renders linked images by adding an image field to the note’s YAML.

The most powerful integration comes from pairing Projects with Raphael’s Database Folder plugin. A dedicated “database folder” view can generate a Notion-like database inside Obsidian, pulling YAML headers from a file to define columns. A new Projects feature called “exclude notes” helps hide specific notes from the project view. The creator favors using both systems together: Projects excels at multi-view planning, while Database Folder adds filters, property types, and select-style fields that make choosing options (topics, music, etc.) faster.

Overall, the workflow turns Obsidian into a content production command center—one project, many synchronized views, and metadata-driven automation—so creators can plan, schedule, and track video progress without leaving their vault.