Organising Your Dev Life With Obsidian | Charlie Cassidy | NZGDC 2025

Item: Organising Your Dev Life With Obsidian | Charlie Cassidy | NZGDC 2025
Rating: 4
Author: PostSingularity Institute

by Charlie Cassidy

Applied Sciences & Engineering Computing & Cybersecurity UDDigital Lifestyle and online world: consumer and user guides UDAPersonal organization software and apps

🎙 Charlie Cassidy 👥 1K 📅 October 9, 2025 ⏱ 47 min 👁 106 📄 tutorial 🧭 2026-08-16

Available in: English (current) Français

Keywords

ObsidianPARAtemplatespluginsautomation

Summary

Charlie Cassidy, a UI engineer, presents a talk on using Obsidian for organizing development work and personal life. He introduces Obsidian as a markdown-based note-taking app and explains key concepts like vaults, notes, and metadata. He then details the PARA method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) and how he customized it to include Calendar, Knowledge, and Inbox folders. He emphasizes the importance of tailoring organizational systems to individual needs. The talk covers templates for daily, weekly, monthly, project, and meeting notes, highlighting the use of plugins like Templater and Periodic Notes for automation. He discusses project organization both alongside existing task management tools (like Jira) and fully within Obsidian for smaller projects. He demonstrates how to create dashboards using Dataview and Bases to display project statuses and tasks. He also shares his approach to automating note creation with QuickAdd and custom scripts. Throughout, he stresses the value of finding a system that works for your brain, especially for those with ADHD.

160 words

Critical Evaluation

Value of the Information & Strength of the Argument

The talk provides valuable, practical insights into using Obsidian for personal organization, especially for developers. The speaker’s experience and specific examples (e.g., modifying PARA, using Templater for conditional content) offer actionable advice. The argumentation is based on personal success and anecdotal evidence, which is persuasive for a tutorial but lacks empirical support. The speaker acknowledges the need for customization and encourages experimentation, which strengthens the practical value.

Scientific Rigor, Source Quality, Title Accuracy

The talk is a personal tutorial with no formal citations or references to external sources. The speaker relies on his own experience and mentions specific plugins (Templater, Dataview, QuickAdd) but does not provide URLs or documentation links. The title accurately reflects the content, focusing on organizing a developer’s life with Obsidian. The talk is well-structured and clear, though the lack of sources limits its scientific rigor.

148 words

Title / Content Match

The title accurately reflects the content, which focuses on using Obsidian for personal and professional organization in a development context.

Quality & Reliability

7/10

The speaker is a UI engineer with four years of hands-on Obsidian experience, providing practical, detailed advice. The talk is based on personal experience and specific plugins, but lacks formal citations or external validation. The information is reliable for practical use, but not scientifically rigorous.

Key Moments

Markers derived by PSI from the transcript: the creator did not define chapters.

Contribution & Novelties

The talk offers a practical, experience-based guide to using Obsidian for personal and professional organization, with specific emphasis on customization for neurodivergent individuals. It provides concrete examples of templates, automations, and dashboards that can be adapted. The ‘Pour aller plus loin’ section suggests further exploration of related concepts.

Pour aller plus loin :

Obsidian Official Documentation — Official guide to Obsidian features and plugins.
PARA Method — The original article by Tiago Forte explaining the PARA method.
Templater Plugin — GitHub repository for the Templater plugin used in the talk.
Dataview Plugin — GitHub repository for the Dataview plugin.
QuickAdd Plugin — GitHub repository for the QuickAdd plugin.

108 words

Radar Profile

The radar profile shows high scores in information quantity and quality, reflecting the detailed and practical content. The technical level is moderate, suitable for a broad audience. The reliability score is slightly lower due to the lack of formal citations, but the speaker's expertise lends credibility.

Reliability 7/10