For Obsidian users
Obsidian project management: the plugin stack, a project template, and when a native app is simpler.
Obsidian is a Markdown notebook, and with the right plugins a vault becomes a serious project tool: tasks with dates, a kanban board, dashboards built from queries, and since 2025 Obsidian's own Bases tables. This page sets out that stack honestly, gives you a project note that works with it, names the places it strains, and shows how nokko, a native Mac and iPhone app that reads the same files, adds a timeline, a timer and invoices without replacing Obsidian.
Why people run their projects in Obsidian
The projects are already next to the notes. Meeting notes, research, client briefs and the tasks they produce live in one vault, linked to each other, searchable in one box, kept as plain Markdown on your own disk. Nothing is uploaded unless you choose a sync service, nothing is priced per seat, and a project note written in 2026 will open in 2036.
The appeal is the same one behind Markdown project management in general, with Obsidian's additions: backlinks, a graph, daily notes, and a plugin for almost anything. The question is never whether Obsidian can manage projects. It is how much of the tool you want to build yourself.
Tasks, Dataview, Bases and a kanban: the Obsidian project stack
Four pieces do most of the work. The Tasks plugin gives task lines a grammar: status in the checkbox, emoji dates for start, scheduled, due and done, priorities and repeat rules, plus a query block that lists tasks from across the vault. Dataview adds inline fields such as [est:: 6h] and queries that turn frontmatter and fields into tables. Bases, Obsidian's own core feature, builds database-style tables and cards from note properties without a query language. A kanban plugin turns a note of headings and bullets into a board.
Together they cover the basics: a per-project note, a cross-vault list of what is due, a board per project, a dashboard of active clients. Each piece is maintained by someone different, each has its own syntax, and the result is yours in every sense, including the maintenance.
- Tasks: the task line notation and the
tasksquery block; the convention nokko and other apps read - Dataview: inline fields and
TABLEorTASKqueries over the vault - Bases: tables and cards over note properties, built into Obsidian
- Kanban: a board per note, lanes as headings, cards as bullets
- Optional: a Gantt plugin, a timer plugin, a template plugin, a sync service for the phone
A project note template that works with the stack
Keep one note per project, in a folder per client or per area. Put the project's metadata in frontmatter so Bases and Dataview can table it, and keep tasks as Tasks-notation lines under headings so both a Tasks query and a kanban board can read them. Write time under the task as a โฑ line, which Tasks ignores and Dataview can sum. This note is also exactly what nokko writes and reads, so the same file works in both.
---
type: project
status: active
client: Bakehouse
start: 2026-11-01
due: 2026-11-29
---
# Bakehouse Website
## Design
- [x] Kickoff call with the baker โ
2026-11-02
- [/] Homepage design [est:: 6h] โซ ๐ซ 2026-11-03 ๐
2026-11-15
- โฑ 2026-11-06 09:15-12:30 (3h15m) โ first pass at the hero
- [ ] Pick a typeface pair
- [>] Logo files from the client
- [ ] Design sign-off ๐ฏ ๐
2026-11-15
## Build
- [ ] Set up hosting [est:: 2h] ๐
2026-11-09
- [ ] Build the menu page [est:: 4h] โณ 2026-11-11
```tasks
not done
path includes Clients
due before next month
sort by due
```Where the plugin stack strains
The complaints in the Obsidian forum and on Reddit are consistent. Dataview queries feel like writing SQL to see your own week. A timeline needs another plugin, and each Gantt plugin reads dates a little differently. A board per project is a note per board, and moving a card is an edit to a bullet, not to the task's own line elsewhere in the vault. The phone needs Obsidian mobile plus a paid sync service or a careful iCloud setup, and plugins behave differently there.
Then there is the work the projects exist for. Tracking time against a task, summing it per client, and turning it into an invoice with VAT and a sequential number is possible with plugins and templates, and nobody enjoys it. Sharing a vault with one colleague who does not use Obsidian means they see raw Markdown. None of this is a flaw in Obsidian, which is a notebook. It is the cost of making a notebook into a project and billing tool.
- A separate plugin, syntax and settings pane for every view
- No timeline, timer or invoicing without further plugins and templates
- The phone depends on a sync service and on plugin support on mobile
- A teammate without Obsidian sees raw files
- Breakage when a plugin or a core feature changes
A Gantt timeline, a timer and invoices over the same vault
nokko is a native Mac app, with an iPhone app, that opens an Obsidian vault as a workspace. It reads the Tasks notation and Dataview fields you already use and draws, with no plugins, a Gantt timeline with milestones and dependencies, a board per project with lanes for each status, a list with the columns you declared, a month calendar, a Today screen you arrange by hand, and a timer that writes a โฑ line under the task. At the end of the month, an invoice is drafted from those lines with your client's rate and VAT, saved as a Markdown file in the vault, and printed to PDF.
Two pages on this site go deeper: Obsidian Tasks as a Gantt chart explains what the timeline reads and how it compares with Mermaid and plugins, and time tracking and invoices from Obsidian shows where every logged hour goes in the file.
Keeping Obsidian as the notebook
nokko installs no plugin and keeps no database beside the files. Its own settings sit in a small hidden .nokko folder at the top of the vault. When you move a due date in nokko, the file gains a different date and nothing else: your notes above and below the task, your links, your blank lines and any syntax nokko does not recognise survive byte for byte. Obsidian stays open on the same files and sees the change at once, and a Tasks query sees what nokko wrote.
The division of labour is the point. Obsidian is the better notebook, with links, the graph and daily notes. nokko is the project, time and invoice layer over the same folder, on the Mac and on the iPhone, where the timer runs on the Lock Screen. Sync between Mac and iPhone goes through your own GitHub repository, your own SFTP server, or iCloud; it carries the Markdown, not the .obsidian folder, which the guide on getting tasks to your iPhone without Obsidian Sync explains.
Which route fits you
Stay with plugins alone if your projects are personal, you like building your own system, you work on Windows or Android, or the board must live inside Obsidian's window. Choose TaskForge if you want a task app over Obsidian Tasks files on every platform, with calendar events beside the tasks. Choose nokko if your tasks are client projects you plan by date and bill by the hour, you are on a Mac and an iPhone, and you would rather the timeline, the timer and the invoice came out of the box.
All three write plain files, so the decision is reversible. A vault that works in nokko works in Obsidian the same afternoon.
Three ways to manage projects in a vault, side by side.
Capabilities, not prices. Plugin availability changes; the first column describes the common stack.
| Capability | Obsidian + plugins | TaskForge | nokko |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reads and writes Obsidian Tasks lines | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Runs inside Obsidian's window | Yes | No | No |
| Kanban board | With a plugin | Yes | Yes |
| Gantt timeline with milestones and dependencies | With a plugin | Not listed | Yes |
| Timer that writes a time entry under the task | With a plugin | Not listed | Yes |
| Invoices drafted from logged hours | With templates | Not listed | Yes |
| iPhone app | Obsidian mobile + sync | Yes | Yes |
| Windows and Android | Yes | Yes | No |
| Sharing with a teammate | A sync service or Git by hand | Not listed | Own GitHub, SFTP or iCloud, built in |
Swipe sideways for the other columns.
The things people ask.
Does Obsidian have project management built in?
What is the best Obsidian plugin for project management?
Can I make a Gantt chart from Obsidian Tasks?
Can I track time in Obsidian?
Will nokko change my notes or my vault settings?
Do I need Obsidian to use nokko?
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