I recently sent out a tweet requesting some ideas for articles — I asked what people would most like to learn about in Obsidian. This is an article to cover one of those requests, specifically — how can you use ChatGPT to generate ideas and brainstorm within Obsidian? There are several unique and powerful ways to integrate the power of Obsidian with AI to generate ideas and I’m going to cover them in this article. Stay tuned…
I’d like to note that there is no way that I’m aware of to integrate GPT with Obsidian without some kind of cost. You require an OpenAI API key for the plugins and methods that I describe in this article.
Despite this, the cost is not very high, especially if you use a lower power model, so I’d recommend you to try out the methods I describe here. You pay for the AI on a per-use basis, so you won’t be bound to unreasonable subscription fees if you aren’t a heavy user.
Plugins to Use
From what I know, these are some of the best Obsidian plugins that integrate AI into Obsidian:
- QuickAdd
- ChatGPT MD
- Smart Connections
- Copilot
There are others being released and updated regularly, so this list is going to be subject to change in the future.
I’ve chosen these over other plugins because of the flexibility in prompting that they give. I’m going to go deeper into why prompting is important and give some examples of how you can use these plugins later in the article, but if you wanted a short list of tools, I won’t waste your time — these are the ones that I’d recommend.
If you want to learn exactly how to generate original ideas with these plugins in Obsidian, read on…
The Prompt is the Key
Giving a quality prompt is most of the battle around generating effective ideas using AI. If you use a vague prompt, the generated responses won’t be of high value. You should be specific about the outcome that you want to achieve, so that the model can narrow down the type of response it should give.
Rather than giving a prompt such as ‘generate some ideas about X for an article’, narrow down what you want, providing a prompt that contains more descriptive language such as ‘extreme’, ‘unconventional’ or ‘unpopular’.
You can also give preceding prompts before the idea generation prompt in order to train the AI to give responses how you want. For example — ‘Think in the same way as X’ or ‘You are a novice in Y’ then ‘What would you most like to know about Y’.
In reality, these are basic way of using AI to generate ideas.
The power of using AI within Obsidian comes from being able to integrate AI with your notes to give the generated ideas context.
This means that there’s no excuse for still keeping good note-taking practices in AI idea generation. You should still create personal notes that contain your own thoughts and opinions, because this is the content that is going to make your output original and engaging.
Considering this, how do you prompt the AI to use your notes to generate ideas?
For this, I most often use the QuickAdd plugin that I gave at the top of the list of plugins earlier in the article. I’ve written a lot about this plugin recently so I won’t add too much detail about its basic function (learn here), but in short, it uses notes in your vault along with QuickAdd syntax as prompt templates. This allows you to use any content in your vault in the prompts that you send to AI.
I have one powerful prompt template that I actively use with QuickAdd to help me with idea generation:
- When I’m writing, I use a prompt template I call Feedback — it reads what I’ve written so far and offers questions based on the work for me to reflect upon. This way, I’m actually stimulated to generate ideas myself rather than relying on generated content to include in the piece.
There’s also a more complex method you can use for generating ideas in Obsidian using the same plugin. This idea comes from plugin developer Christian’s blog post about AI in Obsidian that he released along with the AI Assistant feature in QuickAdd. I can’t take credit for it. The prompt template makes use of DataviewJS to take the titles of all the notes linked to the note of the idea that you want to write about.
It then includes these titles in a paragraph about the topic, with the titles forming part of the text. This shows why it’s important to have good note-taking practices — the title should reflect the content of the note so that the AI can use it in context when generating ideas for your writing.
This shows the advantage of having elements of Zettelkasten in your note-taking system. It’s not just you who benefits from the linked notes now, AI does as well!
If you have knowledge of how to manipulate DataviewJS then you can customise this prompt to include notes with a specific tag or notes in a specific folder too, so the prompt doesn’t constrain you to only specific, well-linked notes in your vault.
Note: I’m not giving the content of the prompts here, as I’m trying to encourage you all to create your own. The more input into the prompt that is your own, the more personalised the output will be.
Smart Connections is another Obsidian plugin that has some access to your notes and therefore can generate for you some content ideas. It has a more typical ChatGPT-like interface to put prompts to. If you use a markdown link to a note whilst prompting, it can access the content of that note and generate relevant related ideas.
It’s not as customisable as QuickAdd, and therefore I don’t use it in my workflow, but it’s a powerful option for those who want something quite intuitive to use — as QuickAdd is complicated to learn, especially for someone who’s quite new to Obsidian. If you want to learn more, here’s how I built an entire writing team using the AI Assistant built into the plugin.
These are the best ways to use AI to generate ideas in Obsidian. I’d like to mention, however, that there is no true replacement for your own inspiration…
AI is the Backup Idea Generator
I don’t like the idea of reliance upon AI for generation of ideas. I believe its most effective role is as a backup rather than a primary source of inspiration. There’s a lot that could damage the quality of your writing when using AI in PKM and content creation.
Notice that all the suggestions that I’ve given use your own notes as some kind of context for the ideas that are generated — this is because your own experience and thoughts is the value that you offer. I don’t heavily agree with using AI for idea generation, because I think that with practice, you can use your own mind for idea generation more effectively.
Here’s how to never run out of ideas without the use of AI…
- Set up an effective capture system — I’m not always brimming with ideas, and I definitely struggle to generate them when I feel pressure to do so. The best way to combat this is to have plenty of places where you can easily capture ideas. Install apps on your phone and computer. Keep a notepad next to your bed. Have a waterproof whiteboard in the shower. Make sure there’s as little friction as possible in transferring your ideas into something more concrete than a notion.
- Consume stimulating content — you ruin the chance of having new and interesting ideas if you don’t expose yourself to the ideas of others. By consuming content that makes you think, you’ll find your brain generating suggestions for your own work that you can create. The skill is to be mindful of the thoughts that your brain is generating, so that when you come across a worthwhile one, you can capture it for later.
- Ask your audience — this article is a great example. If you produce content, you’re likely doing it to provide some value to others. If you have an engaged audience already, you don’t have to do any thinking — just ask the audience what they want to see. The idea for this article came from a tweet that I put out, simply asking for what people wanted to see advice for in Obsidian. Easy.
If you’re finding the above difficult, then you can consider turning to AI to assist you with generating ideas. Don’t let the AI take over. Use the above tips to make the most of the notes you’ve already taken and let AI draw the links between them. Then use the original content from the suggested notes to create your own piece of work. Good luck!