Workflows

Connecting Ideas with Wiki-Links

The first wiki-link you create is usually practical: you’re writing about Magistrate Thorne and you want to reference Thornwall Keep, so you type [[Thornwall Keep]] and move on. What you may not notice immediately is that something has changed in the relationship between those two pages. They now know about each other.

This guide is about cultivating that relationship — building a workspace where ideas are not just stored but connected, where navigating from one page to another is as natural as following a thought.

The Two Directions of a Connection

Every wiki-link creates a connection between two pages — and it works both directions. The page containing the link knows about its target. But the target also knows about the page containing the link — automatically, without any extra step.

This is the backlink system. When you link from Magistrate Thorne’s page to Thornwall Keep, Thornwall Keep records Magistrate Thorne as a page that links to it. Open Thornwall Keep’s detail panel and you’ll see Magistrate Thorne listed in the backlinks section.

The result: links are never one-way. Every connection you create is visible from both ends.

This changes how you think about linking. You don’t have to maintain a separate “who links to this” list. You don’t have to update a master index. The backlinks accumulate automatically as you write, and they’re queryable at any time.

Create a Wiki-Link

In any page’s editor, type [[ to open the link autocomplete. As you type, the dropdown narrows to matching page titles. Select a page and the link appears as a styled inline element — a pill, distinct from surrounding text.

Click any wiki-link to navigate to its target page. The sidebar updates to highlight the target, and the editor shows its content.

The link format supports display text: [[Custom Label|page-slug]]. This lets you write “she governed from her citadel” where “her citadel” links to Thornwall Keep without the link text matching the page title exactly. The pill shows your custom label; the destination is still Thornwall Keep.

Ghost Links: Connecting to Pages That Don’t Exist Yet

You don’t have to create a page before linking to it. Type [[The Verdant Undercity]] even if that page doesn’t exist yet. The link appears with a dimmed style — a ghost link — indicating the destination is unresolved.

Ghost links are promises. They mark things you intend to develop without requiring you to develop them immediately. Your workflow can continue forward; the ghost link captures the intention.

When you eventually create a page titled “The Verdant Undercity,” all ghost links pointing to it resolve automatically. They transition from dimmed to normal styling, and the connection becomes active. The link you wrote three sessions ago, while you were still figuring out what the Verdant Undercity even is, still works.

Build Outward from a Single Idea

A common mistake in note-taking systems is building pages in isolation. You create a page for Magistrate Thorne, write everything you know about her, and move on. The page is complete, self-contained — and disconnected from everything else.

The more generative approach: treat every page as a point in a web, not a document in a folder. When you write about Magistrate Thorne, link every entity she relates to. Link her location. Link her faction affiliation. Link events she was involved in. Link her rivals and allies.

Now open the Thornwall Keep page. Add Thorne as a notable inhabitant via a link. Add the Iron Accord as the controlling faction via a link. Add the Pact of Silence as a relevant historical event via a link.

Three pages, nine links. Each page is now aware of the others. Navigate from Thorne to Thornwall Keep, from Thornwall Keep to the Iron Accord, from the Iron Accord back to Thorne. The workspace has become navigable in the way that interesting knowledge is navigable — through association, not just through search.

Tags vs. Links: Choosing the Right Tool

Wiki-links and tags both connect pages, but they do different things.

Wiki-links are precise, relational connections. “Magistrate Thorne governs Thornwall Keep” is a wiki-link relationship — specific, directional, meaningful. Following the link navigates you somewhere. The relationship has meaning.

Tags are categorical labels applied to many pages simultaneously. “Iron-Accord-affiliate” as a tag means “this page is a member of this category.” Following a tag filter shows you all pages in that category. The relationship is membership, not navigation.

Use wiki-links when the connection has meaning that’s worth following. Use tags when you need to group pages for filtering.

In practice: Magistrate Thorne’s page has a wiki-link to [[The Iron Accord]] (navigable relationship) and a tag Iron-Accord-affiliate (filterable category). One connection is for navigation, the other for organization.

Search as the Connection You Didn’t Know You Had

Not every connection is a wiki-link. Sometimes you mention a concept without linking to it. Sometimes the same name appears in five different pages with no explicit links between them. Full-text search surfaces these implicit connections.

Press Cmd+K to open the command palette and search for any term. Results cover page titles and body content. Search for “Pact of Silence” to find every page — session notes, character backgrounds, faction histories — that mentions it, whether or not you linked them explicitly.

Search is the fallback for connections you forgot to make, for concepts that recur across the workspace in ways you haven’t systematized, and for finding things when you don’t remember which page they’re in. It doesn’t replace wiki-links, but it catches what wiki-links miss.

Navigating the Web You’ve Built

As your knowledge web grows, navigation patterns emerge:

Forward navigation: follow wiki-links from a page to the pages it connects to. From Thorne to Thornwall Keep to the Iron Accord to the Pact of Silence.

Backward navigation: follow backlinks from a page to the pages that link to it. From the Pact of Silence back to every page that references it.

Tag navigation: filter the sidebar by tag to see all pages in a category. All Iron-Accord-affiliated pages, all locations in the Eastern Reach, all sessions from Part Two.

Search navigation: jump directly to a concept regardless of where it lives. Search “Oracle of Dust” to find the character page, the session where she appeared, and the faction document where she’s mentioned as a rumor.

These four patterns cover most navigation needs. The more complete your wiki-links, the more useful forward and backward navigation become. The more consistent your tags, the more useful tag filtering becomes. The more content you’ve written, the more useful search becomes.

What Emerges from a Dense Web of Connections

When a knowledge web reaches a certain density, it starts revealing patterns you didn’t plan for.

You notice that Lira the Cartographer is referenced in six session notes but hasn’t appeared in four sessions — a subplot you’ve let drop. You notice that Thornwall Keep has backlinks from twelve pages but Port Ash has only two — a signal about which locations are doing more work in your campaign or story. You notice that “Pact of Silence” appears in three character backgrounds — a thematic resonance you can lean into deliberately.

The connections you build as you go become data about your own creative project. A well-linked workspace is a mirror that shows you what your world is actually about, not just what you intended it to be about.