org-brain

org-brain implements a variant of concept mapping in Emacs, using org-mode. It is heavily inspired by a piece of software called The Brain, and you can view an introduction to that program here. They also provide a blog with great ideas of how you can think when organizing your Brain.

You can think of org-brain as a combination of a wiki and a mind map, where each wiki page / mind map node is an org-mode file which resides in your org-brain-path, or a headline with an ID property in one of those files. These are called entries. Entries can be linked together, and you can then view the network of links as a mind map, using M-x org-brain-visualize. Here’s a video introducing =org-brain=.

PINNED:  Index


               +-Python              Game development-+-Game design
               +-Programming books           |
   Programming-+-Emacs                       |
         |                                   |
         +-----------------+-----------------+
                           |
                           V
                    Game programming <-> Computer games

Game Maker  Unity

--- Resources ---------------------------------

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_programming
- Passing Through Ghosts in Pac-Man
- In-House Engine Development: Technical Tips

--- Text --------------------------------------

Game programming is the art of programming computer games...

When visualizing an entry, you will see the entry’s relationship to other entries. There are four different types of relationships in org-brain:

Parents

Entries above the visualized entry. If the visualized entry is a headline, then the parent headline in the org-mode file will be one of the parents. In the case of top level headlines, the file itself will be considered a parent. Additional parents can be added manually. In the example above, Programming and Game development are parents of the visualized Game programming entry.

Children

Entries below the visualized entry. This will by default be subheadings of the visualized entry (or level one headlines, if the visualized entry is a file). You can add other children, residing elsewhere, manually. In the example above, Game Maker and Unity are the children of Game programming.

Siblings

These appear to the right of the parent entries. Siblings are the other children of the visualized entry’s parents.

Friends

These appear to the right of the visualized entry. Friends provide a way of adding a hierarchy independent two-way relationship between two entries. Friends must be added manually. In the example above, Computer games and Game programming are friends.

Here’s an article describing how you can use the different relationships (The Brain’s jump thoughts are the equivalent of friends in org-brain).

Apart from the visualized entry’s relationships, org-brain-visualize also show pinned entries, which are shown independently of the visualized entry; Index is a pinned entry in the example above. org-brain-visualize also show a list of the entry’s resources (links and attachments), and the text in the entry. The example above have three resources, and a short text. The resources and text is gathered from org-mode automatically.

There’s also the option to visualize the entry as a tree, or similar to a mind map, where you can zoom in order to show grandparents and grandchildren.

The relationship entries, pinned entries and resources are all links; they can be pressed/clicked to visualize other entries, visit resources etc.

You can also annotate the connection between the visualized entry and one of the other entries. You can think of it as annotating the edge between two nodes in a graph. Annotations will show up in the mini-buffer when hovering over an annotated connection.

Setup and requirements

The easiest way is to get org-brain from MELPA. If you do not want to do that, clone this git repository or download org-brain.el and add it to your load-path. The example below is using use-package and assumes that you’re using MELPA, but you could use (require 'org-brain) or add a :load-path to use-package instead. Most of the configuration below isn’t necessary, but showcases some options.

(use-package org-brain :ensure t
  :init
  (setq org-brain-path "directory/path/where-i-want-org-brain")
  ;; For Evil users
  (with-eval-after-load 'evil
    (evil-set-initial-state 'org-brain-visualize-mode 'emacs))
  :config
  (bind-key "C-c b" 'org-brain-prefix-map org-mode-map)
  (setq org-id-track-globally t)
  (setq org-id-locations-file "~/.emacs.d/.org-id-locations")
  (add-hook 'before-save-hook #'org-brain-ensure-ids-in-buffer)
  (push '("b" "Brain" plain (function org-brain-goto-end)
          "* %i%?" :empty-lines 1)
        org-capture-templates)
  (setq org-brain-visualize-default-choices 'all)
  (setq org-brain-title-max-length 12)
  (setq org-brain-include-file-entries nil
        org-brain-file-entries-use-title nil))

;; Allows you to edit entries directly from org-brain-visualize
(use-package polymode
  :config
  (add-hook 'org-brain-visualize-mode-hook #'org-brain-polymode))

1. org-brain requires Emacs 25 and org-mode 9. These need to be part of your Emacs.
2. Configure org-brain-path (defaults to /brain in your org-directory) to a directory where you want to put your org-brain files (which could be the location where you already keep your org files if you wish to transform your existing org files into org-brain files). You can set this with the example config presented above or through M-x customize-group RET org-brain.
3. If you’re an evil user, you’ll want to add (evil-set-initial-state 'org-brain-visualize-mode 'emacs) to your org-brain configuration.
4. org-brain use org-id in order to speed things up. Because of this, the variable org-id-track-globally should be t (which it already is by default). You may want to modify org-id-locations-file too. If you add entries to org-brain directly from org-mode you must assign headlines an ID. A comfortable way to do this is with the command org-brain-ensure-ids-in-buffer. Even more comfortable is to add that to before-save-hook, so that it runs when saving.
5. org-brain-prefix-map can be bound to a key to make org-brain commands more accessable if you edit entries from org-mode. See Editing from org-mode under Usage below.
6. You might want to add information at the end of an entry, without visiting the file. A way to do this is to use a capture template, such as the one presented above.
7. If you have a lot of entries, it might take some time to gather information about all entries when using org-brain-visualize. You could change the value of org-brain-visualize-default-choices (which is =’all= by default) to only include files, or even just files in the direct root of org-brain-path.
8. If you feel that org-brain-visualize is too cluttered, you may want to set org-brain-show-resources and/or org-brain-show-text to nil.
9. If you have very long entry names, org-brain-visualize may take a lot of horizontal space. You can cap the shown length of entry titles, by setting org-brain-title-max-length.
10. Some users find it confusing having both headline entries and file entries (see below). It may be preferable to only use headline entries, by setting org-brain-include-file-entries to nil. If doing this, you should probably also set org-brain-file-entries-use-title to nil. Another possibility is if you’re only using file entries, in which case you can set org-brain-scan-for-header-entries to nil.
11. polymode is a package (available on MELPA) which allows for several major-modes in the same buffer. If you have required the package you can use M-x org-brain-polymode inside org-brain-visualize, or (as in the example above) add org-brain-polymode to org-brain-visualize-mode-hook.

Category icons

org-brain supports showing icons for your entries, depending on their category. Use the variable org-agenda-category-icon-alist to specify icons for categories.

See example of using all-the-icons for this below under Other useful packages.

Customizing the look of entry titles

When visualizing you might want to see additional information about the entries. This can be done by customizing the following variables:

• org-brain-vis-title-prepend-functions
• org-brain-vis-title-append-functions
• org-brain-vis-current-title-prepend-functions
• org-brain-vis-current-title-append-functions

Each of these variables should be a list of functions, which all takes an entry as the single parameter and returns a string. This string is the prepended or appended to the entry’s title, according to the name of the function. The variables with the name current in them only applies the functions on the currently visualized entry (the focused one).

Suitable functions to add to these lists might be:

• org-brain-entry-icon (included in org-brain-vis-title-prepend-functions by default)
• org-brain-entry-todo-state
• org-brain-entry-tags-string

Headline and file entries

There are two types of entries in org-brain: headline entries and file entries. For the most part these are used the same way, and the main difference between them is how their content is stored inside your org-brain directory. All .org-files inside the org-brain-path are considered as file entries (the content typically being the text before the first headline in the file) and all headlines with an ID property inside these files are considered as headline entries.

By default subdirectories inside org-brain-path are scanned recursively for files, so all subdirectories and their files are considered part of the brain. You can choose to only have the root of org-brain-path be scanned for files, by setting org-brain-scan-directories-recursively to nil.

If you have a headline entry, which you want to convert to a file entry, use M-x org-brain-headline-to-file. Unfortunately there is currently no function to convert a file entry into a headline entry.

Limiting org-brain to headline entries

Most of org-mode is tailored towards working with headlines, and because of this org-brain has some limitations regarding what’s possible with file entries. The concept of both headline and file entries is confusing to some users.

If you prefer to only use headline entries, you can set the variable org-brain-include-file-entries to nil. It then also makes sense to set org-brain-file-entries-use-title to nil.

You may choose to exclude the file part of entry names when choosing among entries. org-brain passes two objects, the file and the headline, to the emacs format function. By setting org-brain-headline-entry-name-format-string to =”%2$s”=, org-brain will only show the headline title.

Here’s an example which may be suitable for a setup without file entries:

(setq org-brain-include-file-entries nil)
(setq org-brain-file-entries-use-title nil)
(setq org-brain-headline-entry-name-format-string "%2$s")

(setq my/default-org-brain-file "brain")
(setq org-brain-default-file-parent my/default-org-brain-file)

Limiting org-brain to file entries

If you instead prefer to work with file entries, you can set org-brain-scan-for-header-entries to nil. It will still be possible to add headline entries, but they will be excluded from most searches when choosing among entries.

Usage

You can create new entries by M-x org-brain-visualize and then typing the name of a non-existing entry. You can go back to the *org-brain* buffer by M-x org-brain-visualize-dwim. It will switch to the *org-brain* buffer. If there’s no such buffer, or if already there, run org-brain-visualize. You could also use M-x org-brain-add-entry if you do not want to visualize the new entry. Also commands which add children, parents and friends, or links to entries, can create new entries in the same way. Se General information below.

If you find that org-brain is missing entries, or list entries which doesn’t exist, try using M-x org-brain-update-id-locations, which syncs the org-brain entries with the org-id caching system.

org-brain-visualize

The primary usage of org-brain is through M-x org-brain-visualize (which you might want to bind to a key). From there you can browse entries, add/remove relationships, open entries for editing etc. The following keybindings are available in org-brain-visualize:

The commands above marked with * can be run with the universal argument C-u in order to operate on the entry link at point instead of the visualized entry.

You may use org-store-link inside of org-brain-visualize in order to store a link to the currently visualized org-brain entry.

If the universal argument C-u is used when running org-brain-visualize-random or org-brain-visualize-wander, the randomized targets are restricted to descendants (children, grandchildren, grand-grandchildren etc) of the currently visualized entry. Use for instance C-u W to wander among the descendants.

The universal argument C-u can also be used with org-brain-open-resource. This lets you choose not only resource from the visualized entry, but also from descendants (children, grand-children, etc) of that entry.

If the universal argument C-u is used when calling org-brain-annotate-edge then the annotation will be “one-way”. The default behaviour is otherwise to annotate the connection in both directions.

When using the mind map visualization (toggle by pressing m), you can use the following keybindings in order to show or hide successive levels of hierarchy relative to the current entry.

If you want to select several entries and then remove/add them as children/parents/friends you can use the s key (org-brain-select-dwim) to select an entry. If the point is over a button link to an entry, that entry will be selected, otherwise it will select the currently visualized entry. If the entry is already selected, it will be unselected instead.

Once you have selected all the entries you wish to use, you can use the S prefix key to do batch processing on the selected entries. The keybindings in this prefix keymap is identical to those in org-brain-visualize. You could for instance use S c to add all selected entries as children to the visualized entry, or S P to remove the parent relationship of the selected entries. When you’re done and wish to clear the selection use org-brain-clear-selected, which is bound to S s.

Editing text from org-brain-visualize-mode

If you have the polymode package installed you can edit your entries directly from org-brain-visualize-mode. Run M-x org-brain-polymode or add org-brain-polymode to org-brain-visualize-mode-hook. After editing you can use C-x C-s (bound to org-brain-polymode-save) to save your changes.

Editing from org-mode

You can edit org-brain entries directly from org-mode. You can use the default org-mode outline structure to define parent/children relationships, but keep in mind that only entries with an ID property will be considered as entries to org-brain; use M-x org-brain-get-id to create an ID property to the current org-mode headline. Another alternative is to use M-x org-brain-refile which will create the ids for you. You can also create IDs for all headlines in the buffer with M-x org-brain-ensure-ids-in-buffer, and you might find it useful to add this to before-save-hook.

Most of the commands available in org-brain-visualize can also be used in org-mode directly, in which case they will operate on the “entry at point”. In other words you can use M-x org-brain-add-child directly from org-mode in order to add a child to the org-brain entry at point. You may also want to use the commands org-brain-goto-<relationsship> to navigate between entries.

Most of the commands available in org-brain-visualize-mode is also bound to the prefix keymap org-brain-prefix-map. You can bind this to a key in org-mode, for instance C-c b, and you could then type C-c b p to add a parent to the current entry. Example config: (define-key org-mode-map (kbd "C-c b") 'org-brain-prefix-map).

You may want to create a link to an org-brain entry in an org-mode file (not necessarily an org-brain file itself). org-brain provides several link types for this purpose. You can use org-insert-link (bound to C-c C-l in org-mode by default) to insert one of these links. They all have in common that they, when clicked, will open the org-brain entry for editing. When inserting a link like this, org-brain will run completion upon all your entries.

brain:

The default kind of link. Just let’s you visit another org-brain entry when clicked. If the variable org-brain-backlink is t a brain-link will also be created as a resource in the link target, linking back to where the link was created. If org-brain-backlink is set to a string, that string will be added as a prefix to the title of the backlink. Example: You set org-brain-backlink to =”<– “= and create a brain: link in Rabbits linking to Carrots. Now a resource with the description <-- Rabbits will be created in Carrots.

brain-child:

When inserted using org-insert-link this will make the linked entry a child to the current org-brain entry, upon completion. Keep in mind that this doesn’t work if you type the link manually; only by completion through org-insert-link.

brain-parent:

Like brain-child: but makes the linked entry a parent of the current entry.

brain-friend:

Like brain-child: but adds the linked entry as a friend.

brainswitch

If you have multiple brains you may want a link which switches to a specific brain and one of its entries. The brainswitch link allows for this.

The names of the relationship inserting links (brain-child, brain-parent and brain-friend) can be customized with the variables org-brain-child-link-name, org-brain-parent-link-name, and org-brain-friend-link-name. This customization should be done before loading org-brain. If you’re using use-package, put the customization in the :init block.

Other commands

If you’re browsing a file and want to add the file – or the current line in the file – as a resource to an entry, you can use M-x org-brain-add-file-as-resource or M-x org-brain-add-file-line-as-resource. If any of these are run with universal argument C-u then add the resources to current/last visualized entry.

General information

If you try to add a child/parent/friend to an entry which doesn’t exist, that entry will be created. The same is true for many other commands prompting for an entry, like org-brain-visualize. The name of a new entry can be written like this: file::headline. The headline will be created as a level one headline in file. If you create a new entry without the headline part, it will by default be created as a file entry. It is possible to change that though by setting the variable org-brain-default-file-parent to a default file. Let’s say you set the variable to =”brain”= and then add the entry Bananas (a non-existent entry). That would be the same thing as writing brain::Bananas.

When adding children, parents, or friends, multiple entries can be added at once by separating their titles with org-brain-entry-separator (which is ; by default). For instance M-x org-brain-add-parent RET music;artists would add both music and artists as parents.

Another available command is M-x org-brain-agenda, which can be used to run org-agenda on your org-brain files.

Slashes in file entry titles

When giving a file entry a title, the title can not contain slashes (/) if org-brain-file-entries-use-title is t.

Renaming files in org-brain

Headline entries use org-id to identify themselves, so the headlines can be manually renamed without worries. File entries, on the other hand, uses the filename as the identifier. This will cause problems if you try to manually rename files inside of org-brain.

In order to rename a file, use M-x org-brain-rename-file.

Archiving entries

org-archive has a problem in org-brain: relationships are maintained, even though the entry should really be removed from the brain. Because of this, please use org-brain-archive instead. This command removes relationships to the entry in the brain, before archiving it. The command also inserts handy links to the archived entry’s relationships.

Special tags

You might have a headline which you do not really want as an entry in org-brain. The most basic way to exclude such a headline is simply to not add an ID property to it. However, org-brain also provide two tags, which you can use to tag the headline:

:nobrain:

This tag excludes the headline, and its subheadings, from your org-brain entries. You can change the tag name by modifying org-brain-exclude-tree-tag.

:childless:

This tag does not exclude the headline, but it excludes the subheadings. You can change the tag name by modifying org-brain-exclude-children-tag. Works on file entries.

The following tags modifies the kind of information that is shown when an entry is visualized:

:notext:

Do not show the entry’s text in org-brain-visualize. You can change the tag name by modifying org-brain-exclude-text-tag.

:resourceless:

Do not show the entry’s resources in org-brain-visualize. You can change the tag name by modifying org-brain-exclude-resources-tag.

:showchildren:

By default local child entries aren’t shown as text. By setting this tag the entry get the entire subtree as text. You can change the tag name by modifying org-brain-show-children-tag. Works on file entries.

:nosiblings:

You may have an entry with lots of children, and when you visualize one of these children you might not want to see the siblings from this parent. A good example would be if you have an index entry or similar. By tagging the parent with nosiblings the parent’s children will not show siblings from that parent. You can change the tag name by modifying org-brain-exclude-siblings-tag.

:nolocalparent:

This is similar to :nosiblings: but the tagged parent will not be shown at all when one of its local children are visualized.

The following tags modify the way how information is shown when an entry is visualized.

:ownline:

Make each child of the tagged entry appear on its own line when the tagged entry is visualized. This only affects the tagged entry. It works akin to temporarily setting org-brain-child-fill-column-sexp to 0.

:nosort:

Display each child of the tagged node in the order the children are listed in the file, rather than in the sorted order determined by org-brain-visualize-sort-function. This affects the order of the node’s children in both the child list (when the tagged node is being visited) and in the sibling list (when one of the tagged node’s children is being visited).

Having multiple brains

You can have multiple brains simply by having more than one brain folder. In this way, each folder becomes a separate brain. You can switch between these using M-x org-brain-switch-brain. You can also use brainswitch: links in org-mode to switch brains.

If you run org-brain-visualize from inside an org-file in the root of an org-brain directory, org-brain will automatically switch to this brain.

Take note!

org-brain creates and uses several headline properties in the PROPERTIES drawer of org-mode headlines:

• BRAIN_PARENTS
• BRAIN_CHILDREN
• BRAIN_FRIENDS
• BRAIN_EDGE_$IDENTIFIER
• ID
• NICKNAMES

These properties are also mirrored as file keywords at the top of file entries, for instance #+BRAIN_CHILDREN: 00c0f06c-9bd4-4c31-aed0-15bb3361d9a2.

These properties/keywords are not meant to be manipulated directly! If you want to remove these properties, use the corresponding command instead (org-brain-remove-child or similar). There’s currently command to remove NICKNAMES though, so at the moment that has to be done manually.

You might also see that org-brain inserts a RESOURCES drawer. It is okay to modify this drawer manually.

The names of the parents/children/friends properties, the prefix for edge properties and the RESOURCES drawer can customized by setting the variables org-brain-parents-property-name, org-brain-children-property-name, org-brain-friends-property-name, org-brain-edge-property-prefix-name and org-brain-resources-drawer-name, respectively. Of course, after doing any customization, the property/drawer names of existing brain files have to be adjusted manually.

org-brain is slow!

If you feel that org-brain is slow while indexing your entries (for instance when running M-x org-brain-visualize) you can customize org-brain-file-entries-use-title, and set it to nil. This will display file names when indexing, instead of the file entry’s title, which is faster.

Should only the first call of org-brain-visualize be slow, an option may be to try persistent caching of the variable org-brain-headline-cache. Choose a session management solution that works for you (an option for helm users). A simple and built-in method is to use the savehist package. To do so, you may add the following configuration:

(savehist-mode 1)
(setq savehist-additional-variables '(org-brain-headline-cache))

FAQ

Wrong number of arguments: (0 . 0), 2

You are probably using the version of org-mode that came with your Emacs install, which has a lower version than 9.2. Check the version of org you have installed with M-x org-version. See Github issue #278.

Export to other formats

org-brain has no built-in functionality for exporting to other formats. I’ve started experimenting with another package named org-brain-export which might be merged into org-brain in the future. org-brain-export is in VERY early stages of development.

Helm and Ivy

If you use Helm or Ivy you can use the commands helm-brain or counsel-brain respectively. These allow for visualizing entries, and adding parents/children/friends to the entry at point. They also allow selecting multiple entries.

These commands do not have any keybindings by default.

Backwards compatibility breaking changes

0.7

As of version 0.7 entry descriptions are deprecated. They made visualization slow, and it was quite a hassle to actually write them. The “help echo” text is now used for edge annotations instead.

0.4

This is only relevant if you’ve been using org-brain before version 0.4

As of version 0.4 (June 2017) org-brain has been rewritten, in order to increase performance and add more options. Because of this, older setups are considered obsolete. Prior to 0.4 only files were considered entries, but now also headlines with an ID property are included as entries. Prior to 0.4 org-brain was using the brain: link and #+BRAIN_PINNED: file keyword to connect files, which was slow due to the need of searching all files for links. In version 0.4 org-brain uses a combination of headline properties, file keywords, org-id, and a data file (org-brain-data-file).

No data in old configurations should be lost, but you’ll have to update the connections between entries. This can be done by using M-x org-brain-create-relationships-from-links, but please backup your org-brain directory first.

It is still possible to add children to an entry by using the brain-child: link, but only if the link is inserted with org-insert-link (bound to C-c C-l in org-mode by default). Linking to specific headlines in a file, via brain:filename::*Headline is deprecated and will no longer work, instead you can convert the headline to an entry and link directly to that.

Other useful packages

There’s some missing functionality in org-brain, which you may find useful. However there are other packages which might improve your org-brain experience. Below are some suggestions (feel free to create an issue or send a pull request if you have more examples), all of them should be available on MELPA.

Chronological entries with org-expiry

org-brain doesn’t add any information on when entries are created, so it is hard get a list of your entries in chronological order. I’ve managed to use org-expiry (part of org-plus-contrib) to add a CREATED property to all org-brain headline entries. Then we can use org-agenda to show the entries in chronological order.

;; Setup org-expiry and define a org-agenda function to compare timestamps
(require 'org-expiry)
(setq org-expiry-inactive-timestamps t)
(defun org-expiry-created-comp (a b)
  "Compare `org-expiry-created-property-name' properties of A and B."
  (let ((ta (ignore-errors
              (org-time-string-to-seconds
               (org-entry-get (get-text-property 0 'org-marker a)
                              org-expiry-created-property-name))))
        (tb (ignore-errors
              (org-time-string-to-seconds
               (org-entry-get (get-text-property 0 'org-marker b)
                              org-expiry-created-property-name)))))
    (cond ((if ta (and tb (< ta tb)) tb) -1)
          ((if tb (and ta (< tb ta)) ta) +1))))

;; Add CREATED property when adding a new org-brain headline entry
(add-hook 'org-brain-new-entry-hook #'org-expiry-insert-created)

;; Finally add a function which lets us watch the entries chronologically
(defun org-brain-timeline ()
  "List all org-brain headlines in chronological order."
  (interactive)
  (let ((org-agenda-files (org-brain-files))
        (org-agenda-cmp-user-defined #'org-expiry-created-comp)
        (org-agenda-sorting-strategy '(user-defined-down)))
    (org-tags-view nil (format "+%s>\"\"" org-expiry-created-property-name))))

Now we can use org-brain-timeline to view entries in chronological order (newest first).

org-cliplink

A simple command that takes a URL from the clipboard and inserts an org-mode link with a title of a page found by the URL into the current buffer.

Here’s a command which uses org-cliplink to add a link from the clipboard as an org-brain resource. It guesses the description from the URL title. Here I’ve bound it to L in org-brain-visualize.

(defun org-brain-cliplink-resource ()
  "Add a URL from the clipboard as an org-brain resource.
Suggest the URL title as a description for resource."
  (interactive)
  (let ((url (org-cliplink-clipboard-content)))
    (org-brain-add-resource
     url
     (org-cliplink-retrieve-title-synchronously url)
     t)))

(define-key org-brain-visualize-mode-map (kbd "L") #'org-brain-cliplink-resource)

link-hint

link-hint.el is inspired by the link hinting functionality in vim-like browsers and browser plugins such as pentadactyl. It provides commands for using avy to open or copy “links.”

After installing link-hint you could bind link-hint-open-link to a key, and use it in org-brain-visualize-mode. If you only want to use link-hint in org-brain-visualize-mode, you could add the following to your init-file:

(define-key org-brain-visualize-mode-map (kbd "C-l") #'link-hint-open-link)

ascii-art-to-unicode

Converts simple ASCII art line drawings in the region of the current buffer to Unicode.

ascii-art-to-unicode is useful if you want org-brain-visualize-mode to look a bit nicer. After installing, add the following to your init-file:

(defface aa2u-face '((t . nil))
  "Face for aa2u box drawing characters")
(advice-add #'aa2u-1c :filter-return
            (lambda (str) (propertize str 'face 'aa2u-face)))
(defun aa2u-org-brain-buffer ()
  (let ((inhibit-read-only t))
    (make-local-variable 'face-remapping-alist)
    (add-to-list 'face-remapping-alist
                 '(aa2u-face . org-brain-wires))
    (ignore-errors (aa2u (point-min) (point-max)))))
(with-eval-after-load 'org-brain
  (add-hook 'org-brain-after-visualize-hook #'aa2u-org-brain-buffer))

all-the-icons

A utility package to collect various Icon Fonts and propertize them within Emacs.

After installing all-the-icons you could decorate the resources in org-brain, by using org-brain-after-resource-button-functions. Here’s a small example:

(defun org-brain-insert-resource-icon (link)
  "Insert an icon, based on content of org-mode LINK."
  (insert (format "%s "
                  (cond ((string-prefix-p "brain:" link)
                         (all-the-icons-fileicon "brain"))
                        ((string-prefix-p "info:" link)
                         (all-the-icons-octicon "info"))
                        ((string-prefix-p "help:" link)
                         (all-the-icons-material "help"))
                        ((string-prefix-p "http" link)
                         (all-the-icons-icon-for-url link))
                        (t
                         (all-the-icons-icon-for-file link))))))

  (add-hook 'org-brain-after-resource-button-functions #'org-brain-insert-resource-icon)

You could also use all-the-icons to add icons to entry categories. For instance if you have two categories named computers and books which you want icons for:

(setq org-agenda-category-icon-alist
      `(("computers" ,(list (all-the-icons-material "computer")) nil nil :ascent center)
        ("books" ,(list (all-the-icons-faicon "book")) nil nil :ascent center)))

deft

An Emacs mode for quickly browsing, filtering, and editing directories of plain text notes, inspired by Notational Velocity.

After installing deft, you can add the function below to your init-file.

(defun org-brain-deft ()
  "Use `deft' for files in `org-brain-path'."
  (interactive)
  (let ((deft-directory org-brain-path)
        (deft-recursive t)
        (deft-extensions '("org")))
    (deft)))

helm-org-rifle

It searches both headings and contents of entries in Org buffers, and it displays entries that match all search terms, whether the terms appear in the heading, the contents, or both.

After installing helm-org-rifle, you can add the function below to your init-file.

(defun helm-org-rifle-brain ()
  "Rifle files in `org-brain-path'."
  (interactive)
  (let ((helm-org-rifle-close-unopened-file-buffers nil))
    (helm-org-rifle-directories (list org-brain-path))))

(defun helm-org-rifle-open-in-brain (candidate)
  (-let (((buffer . pos) candidate))
    (with-current-buffer buffer
      (goto-char pos)
      (org-brain-visualize-entry-at-pt))))

(add-to-list 'helm-org-rifle-actions
             (cons "Show entry in org-brain" 'helm-org-rifle-open-in-brain)
             t)

org-noter

Org-noter’s purpose is to let you create notes that are kept in sync when you scroll through the [PDF etc] document

Thanks to rosetree for providing this tip! After installing org-noter, add the following to your init-file:

(add-hook 'org-noter-insert-heading-hook #'org-id-get-create)
(defun org-brain-open-org-noter (entry)
    "Open `org-noter' on the ENTRY.
If run interactively, get ENTRY from context."
    (interactive (list (org-brain-entry-at-pt)))
    (org-with-point-at (org-brain-entry-marker entry)
      (org-noter)))

org-brain-open-org-noter will run org-noter on the current entry. This lets you save your PDF notes in org-brain, so you can link to them from other entries etc. It can be a good idea to add this command to org-brain-visualize, like this:

(define-key org-brain-visualize-mode-map (kbd "\C-c n") 'org-brain-open-org-noter)

org-board

org-board is a bookmarking and web archival system for Emacs Org mode, building on ideas from Pinboard. It archives your bookmarks so that you can access them even when you’re not online, or when the site hosting them goes down.

Similar packages

The Emacs Wiki has an article about wiki modes in Emacs.

org-roam

Org-roam is a Roam replica built on top of the all-powerful Org-mode.

Org-roam is a solution for effortless non-hierarchical note-taking with Org-mode. With Org-roam, notes flow naturally, making note-taking fun and easy. Org-roam should also work as a plug-and-play solution for anyone already using Org-mode for their personal wiki.

Org-roam aims to implement the core features of Roam, leveraging the mature ecosystem around Org-mode where possible. Eventually, we hope to further introduce features enabled by the Emacs ecosystem.

Org Zettelkasten

An opinionated setup for managing large collections of interlinked org files.

org-wiki

Org-wiki is a org-mode extension that provides tools to manage and build personal wiki or desktop wiki where each wiki page is a org-mode file.