Max Wolf's Second Brain

obsidian markdown features

3 min read

Callouts

Warning

important caveats

FAQ

FAILURE

ERROR

BUG

ABSTRACT

Legacy: Usually used for pasted abstracts
Alias: tldr – the abstract, the 80/20 of the thing
Smtms used for minimally edited LLM generated summaries that are “good enough (for now)”

SUCCESS

QUOTE

For highlighting an explicit quote, or for longer quotes – looks nicer than > quotes (smtms the quote starts in the title and continues in the body, sometimes the body contains comments)

Custom(ized):

INFO

Usually contains supplementary information or context (on notation, terminology, …)

Theorem

Usually contains a well-defined mathematical statement with accompanying proof or reference, if there is one.

Definition

Contains formal self-contained definition of a term or concept, if applicable in prose and mathematical notation. Is focused on clarity and precision.

Idea

Notes about novel insights/ideas/connections/research directions/project ideas (often made by myself or coming from a paper / …), own ideas.

Note

General container for ~ self-contained remarks/comments/concepts without a strict definition; standard callout; observations, secondary insights.

Results

Lorem ipsum

Motivation

why this matters / goal or motivation behind behind a method, can be stated by authors or inferred, or our own, …

History

Origins and historical context of a concept, method, or discovery.

Methodology

Exact (implementation)details about methods/algorithms/procedures/experiment setup/…

Open question

A question that is open / unsolved / unknown, sometimes accompanied with speculation or stream of thought.

TODO

Lorem ipsum

TIP

Epic insights / connections.

Interpretation

Usually contains intuitions/more detailed intuitive explanations or interpretations of a concept, deeper/alternative framings/connections to other concepts

Summary

I tend to use this one for pasting/patching together high quality summaries of concepts when reading papers/books/articles. So it’s smtms like a “quote” callout but different semantics.

EXAMPLE

Worked examples, ideally with step-by-step explanations, illustrations, …
Or a list of examples/subtypes.

Metaphor

A metaphor or analogy. Intuition building.Perspective.

Takeaway

Distilled key insights/practical advice/lessons learned; key implications or applications.

Conclusion

havent used it a lot, but exists. ig for pulling together multiple open insights.

Green faq

A question and its answer / direct Q&A pairs.

Discussion

Opinions, debates, or differing viewpoints on a topic.

Known bugs: (in the Obsidian version – works with quartz)
Nesting a custom callout within a callout removes the icon from the nested callout:

Definition

FAQ

Nesting a default callout in a custom callout keeps the icon:

Definition

Note

Customize

https://ryotaushio.github.io/obsidian-latex-theorem-equation-referencer/theorem-callouts/styling.html

.callout[data-callout="idea"] {
	--callout-color: 125, 142, 172; /* Light yellow background */
	--callout-icon: lucide-lightbulb;
	
	--callout-icon: '<svg>...custom svg...</svg>
}

The value of the data-callout attribute is the type identifier you want to use, for example [!custom-question-type].

  • --callout-color defines the background color using numbers (0–255) for red, green, and blue.
  • --callout-icon can be an icon ID from lucide.dev, or an SVG element.
Obsidian built-in classes
  • .callout
    • .callout > .callout-title
      • .callout > .callout-title > .callout-icon
      • .callout > .callout-title > .callout-title-inner
      • .callout > .callout-content

References

Obsidian

Graph View