My Digital Garden Setup

Inspired by Bibek Panthi’s Braindump and Maggie Appleton’s Garden History.

Why I write

1. Writing is thinking — Structuring thoughts in text forces clarity.
2. Writing is remembering — You reabsorb information faster next time.
3. Learning in the open — Write for yourself 3 months ago. Don’t wait to be perfect.

A digital garden is a collection of inter-linked notes that grows over time. Unlike a blog (chronological), a garden is networked.

How this site is built

Each page is a Markdown file with [[wikilinks]]. The stack:

• Obsidian to write notes locally (any Markdown editor works)
• Quartz 5 to build the site — handles graph, backlinks, RSS, sitemap, search
• GitHub Pages for hosting
• Cloudflare for DNS + CDN for sandeep31.com.np

Flow:

1. Write Markdown in content/notes/*.md or content/blog/*.md
2. [[link]] to other notes — this creates the graph
3. git commit && git push -> GitHub Action builds and deploys

No database. Plain text lasts forever. Easy to backup with git.

How you can have your own

1. Use Obsidian (easiest, great mobile) or Emacs org-roam (like Bibek does).
2. Keep notes in plain Markdown/Org files.
3. Publish with Quartz or org-publish. Use Pandoc if you switch tools later.

Tip from Bibek: Don’t stress about tools. The main point is to write.

Folder structure

content/
  index.md              # Home like braindump/index.html
  my-digital-garden-setup.md
  blog/
    index.md            # Aggregator
    hello-world.md
  notes/
    index.md            # Aggregator
    rate-limiter.md
    vector-database.md

Daily workflow (see braindump daily template)

Capture → Connect → Publish. 15-30 min/day.

Related: index | index | Home