Org-roam

Org-roam is a rudimentary Roam replica in Org-mode. This project intends to adaptively implement the core features of Roam in org-mode and eventually introduce newer features suitable for the Emacs ecosystem. It offers a non-hierarchical note-taking approach which is effortless yet powerful. Note-taking becomes fluent and easy when you don't have to worry about where a particular note should go: you just start writing from anywhere about anything.

To learn more about Roam, I recommend the following links:

• Building a second brain in Roam
• Roam: Why I Love It and How I Use It

It is difficult to explain the workflow in words, so the best way to figure out whether this is for you is to try it.

Project Status

As of February 2020, it is in a very early stage of development.

A Preview

Here's a screenshot of org-roam. The org-roam buffer shows backlinks for the active org buffer in the left window, as well as the surrounding content in the backlink file. The backlink database is built asynchronously in the background, and is not noticeable to the end user. The graph is generated from the link structure, and can be used to navigate to the respective files.

Installation

The recommended method is using use-package and straight, or a similar package manager.

(use-package org-roam
      :after org
      :hook (org-mode . org-roam-mode)
      :straight (:host github :repo "jethrokuan/org-roam")
      :custom
      (org-roam-directory "/path/to/org-files/")
      :bind
      ("C-c n l" . org-roam)      
      ("C-c n t" . org-roam-today)
      ("C-c n f" . org-roam-find-file)
      ("C-c n i" . org-roam-insert)
      ("C-c n g" . org-roam-show-graph))

If not using package.el, you can also clone it into your Emacs directory and add it to your load path:

git clone https://github.com/jethrokuan/org-roam/ ~/.emacs.d/elisp/org-roam

(add-to-list 'load-path "./elisp")
(require 'org-roam)

Quickstart

Suppose you want to keep track of all the cool-facts you come across.

1. Open a org-roam file and start writing about anything. You can choose to jot it in your daily file with org-roam-today, or pick a file using org-roam-find-file. Anywhere near your cool fact, run M-x org-roam-insert and choose the filename cool-facts and then keep on writing whatever you want. You can choose to create existing files, or create a new file if necessary.
2. When you open cool-facts.org and call org-roam you will see all the places you have referenced this file. So all the cool-facts you have writen anywhere in your database are easily accessible from here.
3. Note that cool-facts.org doesn't even have to contain any content: it can just be used as an index page for referencing all cool facts that you've written across your notes!

Synergistic Packages in the Org Ecosystem

A number of packages work well combined with Org-roam:

Deft provides a nice interface for browsing and filtering org-roam notes.

(use-package deft
  :after org
  :bind
  ("C-c n d" . deft)
  :custom
  (deft-recursive t)
  (deft-use-filter-string-for-filename t)
  (deft-default-extension "org")
  (deft-directory "/path/to/org-roam-files/")
  (deft-use-filename-as-title t))

Org-journal is a more powerful alternative to the simple function org-roam-today, that provides better journaling capabilities, and a nice calendar interface to see all dated entries.

(use-package org-journal
  :bind
  ("C-c n j" . org-journal-new-entry)
  :custom
  (org-journal-date-prefix "#+TITLE: ")
  (org-journal-file-format "%Y-%m-%d.org")
  (org-journal-dir "/path/to/org-roam-files/")
  (org-journal-date-format "%A, %d %B %Y"))

Similar Projects

• org-zettelkasten
• zetteldeft

The main differentiating factor of this project is that links are just natural file links, with no dependence on special tagging with e.g. org IDs, or special indicators. This constraints the utility of the project, but I have thus far found it sufficient.

Knowledge Bases using Org-Roam

• Jethro Kuan (Source)

Contributing

Pull requests with improvements are welcome. For feature requests, create Github issues.