Wikilink Categories

How to organize your notes with wikilink categories instead of tags — the practical, click-by-click how-to.

In the Celestial Vault, you organize notes with categories, not tags. And unlike most note apps, those categories are wikilinks to actual category pages, not just metadata strings.

This page is the practical how-to. The conceptual why is on The Self-Organizing Vault.

The Basic Pattern

Every note in your vault can have a categories: property at the top. It's a list of wikilinks:

---
categories:
  - "*Books*"
  - "*Marketing*"
  - "*Recommended by Sasha*"
---

Three things are happening here:

The note is "labeled" with three categories
Each category is a link to its category page (e.g., Books.md)
The note now appears in the base (database view) on each of those category pages — automatically

You write the wikilinks once. The aggregation is free.

Open a note. If you don't see the properties panel, hit Cmd/Ctrl + P → "Toggle Properties in document". Click into the categories field, type a category name, and pick from the autocomplete (or create a new one).

Option 2 — Edit Frontmatter Directly

Switch to source mode (Cmd/Ctrl + E toggles writing/source) and add lines under categories::

categories:
  - "*Books*"

The wikilink syntax matters — you need the *...* brackets.

Option 3 — Use A Template

When you create a note via Templater (e.g., the Book Template, Person Template), the template auto-fills the right categories: for you. You don't think about it.

(See Adjusting Templates Yourself for editing templates.)

What Counts As A Category

Anything you want. The Celestial Vault ships with 36 starter categories — Books, Movies, People, Companies, Albums, Songs, Recipes, etc. — but you can add your own at any time.

Categories aren't precious.

If you need a category that doesn't exist yet, just type the wikilink (*Hobbies*) into your note's frontmatter. The category page doesn't exist yet — that's fine. The link sits there as "unresolved" until you create the actual category page.

When you do create Hobbies.md, every previous note that linked to *Hobbies* retroactively connects to it. The vault rewards future-you for following intuition.

Multiple Categories Per Note

Most notes have two or three categories. Some have one. A few have five. There's no upper limit.

Common combinations:

A book recommended by a friend → *Books* + *Recommended by Sasha*
A meeting note with a specific person → *Meetings* + *Sasha*
A travel reflection → *Trips* + *Reflections* + *Berlin*
A book you've read about marketing → *Books* + *Marketing*

The note appears in every relevant category page's view. No copying, no decision about which folder it "belongs" in.

Categories Are Links — Not Tags

If you've used Obsidian before, you might be wondering why this isn't just a tags: property. Two reasons:

1. Categories show up in the graph view.

Because they're wikilinks, your category pages become nodes in the graph. You can see your *Books* node connected to all 47 of your book notes, your *Sasha* node connected to every meeting, every recommendation, every photo. Tags don't do this.

2. Categories are notes.

A *Books* link points to Books.md — a real markdown file. Open it, and you can write anything on it: a description of how you think about books, a list of your reading rules, a manifesto. The category page is a regular note that also happens to embed a database view.

Tags are just labels. Categories are notes that double as labels.

Renaming Categories

If you've been using *Books* for a while and decide you'd prefer *Reading*, Obsidian's built-in rename functionality handles this perfectly:

Right-click Books.md in the file explorer → Rename
Change to Reading.md
Obsidian updates every wikilink to it across the entire vault

Your 47 book notes all now categorize under *Reading*. The base view on the new page picks up automatically.

Removing A Category

To remove a category from a note, just delete the line from its frontmatter:

# Before
categories:
  - "*Books*"
  - "*Marketing*"

# After
categories:
  - "*Books*"

The note no longer appears in the *Marketing* view. The Marketing category page itself still exists (you can delete it separately if you want).

A Category-Only Note Type: The Hub

Sometimes you'll want a note that only has categories — no body content, just a categorized aggregator. For example:

---
categories:
  - "*Q2 2026 Goals*"
  - "*Career*"
  - "*Active*"
---

The note links to three categories. Each category page now lists this note. The note itself can have a few sentences of body or be left almost empty — it's a hub, a connection point.

These hubs become useful as your vault grows: tiny notes that exist purely to bridge concepts.

Categories Inside The Body

You can also add *Books* (or any other wikilink) inside the body of a note, not just in the frontmatter. The link still creates a graph connection. But the note only appears in the category's base view if *Books* is in the categories: frontmatter property — body links don't trigger the base view's filter.

This is by design: it lets you mention a category in passing without forcing the note to be filed under it.

Up Next

Bases & Database Views — the engine that makes categories aggregate
The 36 Category Pages — what ships with the vault
The Self-Organizing Vault — the philosophy behind all this