Folgezettel Navigator

An Obsidian plugin that draws Luhmann's Folgezettel sequence of your current note in a sidebar and lets you walk it — branch by branch.

[!note] Vibe-coded with Claude. This plugin was written with the help of Anthropic's Claude through an iterative, AI-assisted ("vibe coding") workflow — steered, reviewed, and tested by a human, but with the code itself largely generated by the model. It has been tested in real vaults, but comes with no warranty; use it at your own risk (see License).

What is a Folgezettel, and why this plugin?

In Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten, notes aren't filed by topic — they are chained. Each note follows on from another ("Folgezettel" = follow-up slip), and any note can branch into several continuations. This turns a pile of atomic notes into threads of thought: sequences you can read in order, that fork wherever an idea splits.

Obsidian's graph and backlinks show you connections, but not this reading order. Folgezettel Navigator does: for whatever note you're reading, it shows where it came from, where it leads, and where the thread branches — so you can follow a train of thought instead of hopping around a web.

Setting up your notes

The plugin reads continuation links from a frontmatter property (by default folgezettel). In a note, list the note(s) that continue it:

---
folgezettel:
  - "[[Second thought]]"
  - "[[A parallel branch]]"
---

• Links are ordinary Obsidian wikilinks (aliases are tolerated, no unique note identifier is required for the filename of a note).
• A note may point to several continuations — that's an outgoing branch.
• A note may be pointed to by several notes — that's an incoming branch.

The property is written in reading order: it lists what comes next. The plugin derives the reverse direction ("what came before") automatically, so you only ever maintain links in one direction.

The panel

Open it from the ribbon (branch icon) or the command palette → Open Folgezettel navigator. It follows whatever note is active in the editor:

• The active note is pinned to the vertical centre, marked with an accent-coloured dot.
• Notes leading into it (its predecessors) stack upward.
• Notes continuing from it stack downward.
• Entries are threaded on a guide rail, each marked with a dot — a small timeline of the sequence.

Switch to another note and the panel re-centres on it. By default it shows up to five notes on each side (configurable — see Settings).

Junctions (branches)

Where the thread forks — a note with more than one continuation, or more than one note leading into it — the panel shows a junction: an entry with a fork icon in place of the plain dot.

A junction can't display every strand at once, so it picks a sensible default: the branch whose note was most recently modified, and it continues the sequence along that one. To explore the alternatives:

1. Click the fork icon. The entry expands into a card listing every option (your current choice first), styled like Obsidian's search-result previews.
2. Hover an option (desktop) to preview where that strand leads — the sequence beyond the junction updates live, without committing to it.
3. Click an option to choose it. The card collapses and the sequence re-roots along your pick.

Your branch choices are remembered while you stay on the note and reset when you move to a different one.

Interactions at a glance

On a junction entry the two targets do different things: clicking the title opens the note, while clicking the fork icon opens the branch list.

On mobile

The plugin works on Obsidian Mobile. Everything is tap-driven: tap a title to open it, tap a fork to expand a junction, tap an option to choose a strand. The hover-only previews (branch preview and page preview) are desktop affordances and are simply absent on touch — the rest of the workflow is identical.

A typical workflow

1. Write atomic notes and connect them with the folgezettel property as your thinking progresses — each note points at the note(s) it leads into.
2. Keep the panel open in a sidebar while you read or write.
3. Follow the thread upward (where this came from) and downward (where it leads) by clicking titles; the panel re-centres each time.
4. At a fork, expand the junction, preview the options, and choose the strand you want to pursue.

Settings

• Folgezettel property — the frontmatter property the plugin reads for links (default folgezettel). Change it to match your own naming convention.
• Sequence length — how many notes to show on each side of the active note (1–10, default 5).

Both apply immediately to any open panel.

Installation

From Obsidian (once listed): Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search "Folgezettel Navigator" → Install → Enable.

Manually: download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from a release, put them in <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/folgezettel-navigator/, then enable the plugin under Settings → Community plugins.

Development

npm install    # install dependencies
npm run dev    # watch + rebuild main.js on change
npm run build  # type-check and produce a production bundle

License

Copyright © 2026 Niels-Oliver Walkowski.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty. See the LICENSE file for the full text.