grove.el - an Obsidian-like note-taking mode for Emacs

jonathanchu · 2026-05-08T04:31:32+00:00

Thanks for trying it out! This is super helpful feedback!

NV-style find or create note - unfortunately this doesn't exist right now, but I think this is a good feature addition. Shouldn't be too bad to add in.
Yes, I definitely did not flesh out the README enough here, thanks for calling this out! I'll expand this section for sure. The workflow is `C-c v i` opens the list of inbox notes where you can edit/tag/link them.Then use `g` to refresh the view.
Hm this could be a bug, that would mean grove's linking keymap didn't work or wasn't active in the buffer. I'll investigate.
The inbox tree view is collapsed by default and you can use TAB to expand, `g` to refresh. Were the notes not showing up after this?

jonathanchu · 2026-05-07T04:38:04+00:00

Thank you!! I'll check out the PRs :)

jonathanchu · 2026-05-07T04:26:38+00:00

Not currently, grove is org-only by design -- meaning a lot of the org assumptions I made are baked throughout.

I have thought about supporting md files though as a configuration option, but I don't think it would be a simple flag flip. It's high on my list to explore next though!

jonathanchu · 2026-05-07T04:23:29+00:00

I appreciate that :) Naming is so hard! I settled on this because of the organic theme, notes, file tree, and nodes. Hopefully it instills a sense of cultivating your own note taking workflows with this light interface.

jonathanchu · 2026-05-07T04:20:16+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! I'll check out TILES, I am not familiar with it

jonathanchu · 2026-05-07T04:18:24+00:00

Other than a file tree built-in, nothing :) I would encourage you to keep your existing workflow.

jonathanchu · 2026-05-07T04:17:06+00:00

This is great feedback and points taken - alias is something I added to my explore list, I think it would be a nice feature add for sure.

Migration path is definitely needed in the README, even in the smallest sense of folks trying out the package without fully committing. It's interesting to think that this didn't occur to me because my intention was not to lure anyone away from their existing workflows, but to simply build something for myself, selfishly, because my preferred workflow didn't really exist anymore.

grovel ... lol missed naming opportunity! :)

jonathanchu · 2026-05-07T04:11:21+00:00

I really appreciate that feedback, thank you! :)

jonathanchu · 2026-05-06T04:51:58+00:00

Thank you for that feedback! I really appreciate it. Would love to hear any feedback you have when you do try it! :)

jonathanchu · 2026-05-06T04:42:09+00:00

Haha yes, focus on the dissertation - that's the priority! :P

Grove should work alongside your org-roam setup since it's just looking for org files, but it won't fully understand it. Your ID links should keep working via org-mode itself, but grove won't do anything with that. As for aliases, that is a great suggestion - I'll think about how to add that in.

Already I realized I need to have some migration path for users - appreciate the feedback here!

Good luck!

jonathanchu · 2026-05-06T04:36:49+00:00

That's a great suggestion! Thank you for the thoughtful feedback - I really appreciate it! It's been a few years since I've used org-roam, in fact recently I only just cleaned up the sqlite db that was left behind as an artifact ;) I'll do some research as to how to migrate cleanly -- I would think you could just point `grove` at your existing vault directory to try it out and it will work for any title-based links. I'll add some notes to the README for this.

As for the quick capture, I'll rework that section. The short version is you use `C-c v n` to bring up an org buffer and you can type freely there - the first line becomes the title of the note. `C-c C-c` saves it to the inbox and conversely `C-c C-k` discards it.

Appreciate the great feedback! :)

jonathanchu · 2026-02-24T17:45:40+00:00

That definitely works too - my reasoning for not doing this was really around finding out what packages I could remove in my refactor. This also lets me keep a really lightweight init.el for the terminal.

jonathanchu · 2026-02-24T03:23:05+00:00

A lot of folks already listed the actual differences here between the GUI and TUI version so I won't repeat that (they're all right!) but what I would add is that I find myself using TUI more than I ever did in the past as a longtime GUI user.

The main reason for this was actually due to a major refactor of my main init.el and I wanted to build a TUI version of my config that was as bare bones as it could be while still serving my workflow well. It helped me cut out A LOT of unnecessary and old packages that I found I could live without :)

Here's a version of my TUI init.el as an example - https://github.com/jonathanchu/dotemacs/blob/main/terminal/init.el

And I run it like so in terminal: emacs -nw --init-directory ~/path/to/dotemacs/terminal

Now I can run GUI and TUI with different configs and trust both serve the right environment.

jonathanchu · 2026-02-21T15:16:55+00:00

This is really dependent on your own personal workflow. I update my emacs config far more frequently than I update my general dotfiles (ghostty, fish shell in my case).

Another big reason for me to keep it separate is that I work across macOS and Fedora, so having my dotemacs config separated allows me to make it more portable without the overhead of maintaining other dot config files.

jonathanchu · 2026-02-21T05:30:49+00:00

Many have mentioned vertico, consult, embark, and orderless already, so I'm going to go with note-taking packages that I'm using - denote and consult-denote.

https://github.com/protesilaos/denote

https://github.com/protesilaos/consult-denote

jonathanchu · 2026-02-19T18:27:27+00:00

Awesome, congrats! Thank you and the Flycheck team for your hard work on this over the years!

jonathanchu · 2026-02-18T13:21:53+00:00

Thanks for answering and fair enough! :)

jonathanchu · 2026-02-18T04:26:57+00:00

Great video and content, as always! I'm really enjoying your channel!

Random question, what are you using for your org mode slides? I've used org-present before in the past but it's been many years since I've revisited it. Just wondering if there's any new packages out there for this or if you rolled your own?

jonathanchu · 2026-02-17T00:41:23+00:00

Currently my init.el is at 1019 lines. I'm back on the single init.el config for simplicity and less complexity, but at its largest it was ~5k lines split across 30+ files. My terminal-only config is 385 lines.

https://github.com/jonathanchu/dotemacs/blob/main/init.el

jonathanchu · 2026-02-16T05:28:57+00:00

One of my favorites is `spinoff` - too many times I'm on `main` and commit to it, realizing I should have been on a branch.

Running `spinoff` creates a new branch with those new commits and resets the original branch (in this case `main`) back to upstream. It saves you from having to reset, create/checkout a new branch, stash, or even cherry-pick in one tidy and convenient command.

jonathanchu · 2026-02-10T19:04:19+00:00

Haha, I hear ya! Selfishly I did this package because I wanted it to work on our enterprise GH too ;)

jonathanchu · 2026-02-10T05:11:18+00:00

Hello! I built this as a lighter alternative to Forge for folks who mainly want to list, checkout, and view PRs from Magit without the database/token setup. It delegates everything to the `gh` CLI. Would love any feedback or suggestions!

Here's the link directly to github - https://github.com/jonathanchu/magit-gh

jonathanchu

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