Links and backlinks

If you only learn one thing about Obsidian beyond markdown, learn linking.

How to link a note

Type two open square brackets and a note name:

I met with [[Alice Chen]] yesterday.

That creates a link to Alice Chen.md in your vault. Click it in Obsidian → you jump to that note. The link works even if the note doesn’t exist yet — clicking it creates the file.

Backlinks: the magic part

Open any note. Look at the right sidebar in Obsidian. You’ll see a Backlinks panel showing every other note that links to the one you’re viewing.

This is bidirectional. You don’t have to manually maintain “see also” sections. If Daily 2026-05-15.md mentions [[Alice Chen]], then opening Alice Chen.md shows that daily note in its backlinks panel automatically.

That’s the whole point. Linking is cheap. Discovering connections is automatic.

Aliases — same note, different names

You’ll write about Alice as “Alice”, “Alice C.”, and “Chen” depending on context. You don’t want three different notes. Use aliases in frontmatter:

---
aliases: [Alice, Alice C., Chen]
---

# Alice Chen

Now [[Alice]] resolves to the same note. Cleaner writing, one canonical source.

Pipe syntax — show different text

Sometimes you want a link to look natural in a sentence:

I met with [[Alice Chen|Alice]] yesterday.

Renders as: “I met with Alice yesterday.” The link still points to Alice Chen.md.

The graph view

Ctrl+G (or the graph icon in the left sidebar) opens the global graph — every note as a dot, every link as a line. Use it:

As pretty art (it’s mesmerizing)
To find clusters — what topics are deeply linked? what’s isolated?
To find orphans — disconnected dots are notes nobody links to. Either delete them or add links.

For a single note, the local graph view shows just that note’s neighborhood. Useful for browsing.

Embedding notes inside notes

![[Alice Chen]]

The ! prefix embeds the full content of the linked note inline. Useful for:

Showing a related note’s content without leaving the current note
Including a “Q1 goals” note inside daily summaries
Building dashboards (combine with Dataview later)

Embedding a specific section

![[Alice Chen#Background]]

Embeds just the ## Background section.

Embedding a block

Highlight a paragraph in any note, right-click → Copy Block Reference. You get something like ^abc123. Now you can embed it:

![[Alice Chen#^abc123]]

The exact paragraph appears, with a permalink. The skills use block references for citing specific claims in research synthesis.

Tags and frontmatter — the second axis of organization.