Excalidraw Writing Machine: Generate articles from your Visual Zettelkasten cards in Obsidian

🚀 Cohort 10 starts on 24 August 2024. 📔 We will process Simple Marketing for Smart People into a Book on a Page
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In this video, I demonstrate the Excalidraw Writing Machine (EWM) script, which converts a visual layout of an article into a draft writing. The layout can include text elements or visual Zettelkasten notes. The script follows the arrows between nodes to generate a hierarchical Markdown document. By feeding this document into generative AI like ChatGPT, you can quickly produce a nearly publish-ready draft, making it easier to create academic articles, blog posts, presentations, and more.

Resources:

Download the Excalidraw Writing Machine script from the Excalidraw Obsidian Script store (as demonstrated in the video).
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00:00 Intro: a showcase of the end result
00:33 The workflow is adjustable to your needs
01:04 The promise of Zettelkasten: Never start from scratch
01:55 The MindSET Framework: 4D PKM
04:30 The MindSET Framework: Visual Zettelkasten
05:50 The MindSET Framework: Visually organizing ideas is more powerful than shuffling bullet points
06:35 The Paper Writing Machine
07:34 Solution Components
08:08 A demo run on a simplified flow
10:53 How to install the Excalidraw Writing Machine Script
11:31 Running the Script on the Atomic Habits Example without using a template
14:26 Processing the draft with ChatGPT without Templater Automation
16:18 Introducing the Templater + AI for Templater script
20:12 Running the workflow with the script
21:20 Script settings are only visible after the first run
23:22 Demonstrating the effect of not including image links
23:48 Customizing the Excalidraw Writing Machine script to your needs (including with the help of ChatGPT)
25:38 The sequence of creating arrows is important
27:48 Closing Thoughts about the Visual Thinking Workshop

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🍿Watch next:
Visual PKM:

Book on a Page Summaries:

Diagraming for PKM:

My tools and processes:
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#excalidraw #sketchnotes #obsidianmd #pkm #zettelkasten #academicWriting

[VisualPKM]

🚀 Excited to share this deep dive into the Excalidraw Writing Machine (EWM) script! This tool is a game-changer for anyone looking to transform visual layouts into structured drafts, whether you're working on academic papers, blog posts, or presentations. If you’re exploring Zettelkasten, PKM, or Obsidian, this workflow is fully customizable to fit your needs.

🔗 Don’t forget to check out the resources linked in the description, including the demo files and the script itself. And if you find value in this video, I’d love your support on Ko-fi!

💬 Let me know how you're planning to use the EWM script, or drop any questions you have below. I’m here to help you get the most out of your visual thinking tools!

[brain.trinity]

Woah Zsolt this is mind blowing!
I've been using Gen AI to get rough draft of my writing like you would show in this video, but adding a visual element to it with a tree structure will temendousoly help out the planning and structuring process!
And maybe on another section of the same canvas, I might be first able to just lay out the cards (embeds) before hand previous to drawing out the tree.
I always appreciate your pioneer mindse5 into visual Pkm.

[followthegood]

Excellent. Marvelous. Mind Jolts by Zsolts.

[quietlyworking]

👏 Completely spectacular! Feels like magic💕🙏 thank you!

[JTIAPBN]

"Thank you for your tutorial. I successfully generated an article by following your instructions. However, I encountered a problem and had to use the shortcut Alt+R after selecting the template. I wanted to share this solution in case others face the same issue. Once again, thank you for your hard work and helpful guidance."

[RobertRodriguezJr]

Amazing, super useful and still trying to wrap my head around all the potential uses. One question, at 4:50 you select an embedded drawing and open the backside of the note in a new window. Are you using some extra script or plugin to do that? I can't seem to achieve that in one step as you show, thanks

[LarsOlesen-oq]

Great work as always. Could the idea of the way arrows are used for the writing machine inspire how arrows could be used for the presentation, so they are used in the same way - or maybe support frames for the writing machine?

[weiguo]

That is a brilliant idea, Zsolt. It can really accelerate the writing progress!
I've tried to use chatgpt add another function to that script: extract the text from the document if the element a wiki link (I used [[file]] format).
However, I failed to do that. Can you give me some hint how to do that? I would really appreciate it.

[李样-hs]

Excellent creation, plus I have another request. After listing each idea in excalidraw and exporting all ideas as a single article, can I batch output each idea as a separate note? Editors can do things like encoding the cards for each idea. Because isn't the rule of Zettelkasten that every idea corresponds to a card?

[rightitnowai]

Like it!
Could you let me know how to open and close back-of-note card like you? 4:54

[syedamanhussain]

I want to know why we have to focus on gpt only why we are not able to use other llm models also
Can you please upgrade your workflow by adding more options for llms like gemini and groq as they will provide more scale to your work

[YeHang]

this is a great idea to have a back side of your note! But your way involved too much of action to take. With another software call affine, you can convert your note to canvas with one click. Maybe you should try to reduce the friction. Love your work❤

[jiahao]

Dear Zsolt, I am insert an image in obsidian-excalidraw, and i am doing some extra drawing in the images,
when i make mistake and want to use eraser to erase some part of my drawing, it will also erase my inserted image, but i want to keep my insert image, only erase the drawing. are there any solution to this?

[jiahao]

today seems some problem with obsidian-excalidraw, all the icon function as zoom in and zoom out, any other has this issue?