How to set up GTD in Obsidian (with a board that syncs to your phone and your AI)

The short version: install the free GTD Brain community plugin, sign in with your email, and your vault gets a GTD Brain folder with the classic Getting Things Done lists as plain Markdown, one note per item: Inbox, Next Actions grouped by context, Projects, Waiting For, Someday Maybe, plus a Weekly Review checklist. You capture by making a note in Inbox, clarify by moving it to another folder and setting a property, and the plugin syncs every change to a board that is also on your phone and in ChatGPT and Claude. Nothing leaves your vault except the notes inside that one folder. The rest of this guide is the setup, with screenshots, and then how each GTD step works day to day.

Step 1: install the plugin

Open Settings, Community plugins. If the vault is in Restricted mode, turn it off (the plugin needs to talk to GTD Brain, which Restricted mode forbids for every plugin). Click Browse, search for “GTD Brain”, then Install and Enable. You can also start from the plugin’s page in the Obsidian directory and press Add to Obsidian, which opens the same install screen in the app.

The plugin is open source and the code is on GitHub at github.com/minosin/gtdbrain-obsidian. It reads and writes only the notes inside its own folder and talks to one server, GTD Brain’s. Obsidian’s review reproduced the released build byte for byte from that repository, so what you install is what you can read.

Step 2: sign in with your email

Open the plugin’s settings tab (or run the command GTD Brain: Sign in) and press Sign in. Type your email, then the six-digit code we send you. There is no password and no API key. A new email creates a free GTD Brain account with a starter board; an email you already use for GTD Brain, on the web or the phone app, connects the vault to that board.

The moment the code is accepted the plugin creates the folders and pulls every card on the board into the vault as a note. With a brand-new account that is the starter board, a handful of example cards you can rename or delete. There is nothing else to set up.

What you get in the vault

Everything lives under one folder, GTD Brain by default (you can rename it in the plugin settings). Inside it:

• One folder per list: Inbox, Next Actions, Projects, Waiting For, Someday Maybe, and Archive. Each card on the board is one note in the folder for its list. The note’s file name is the card title and its body is the card’s notes.
• One overview note per list(Inbox, Next Actions, Projects, Waiting For, Someday Maybe at the top level). These are generated on every sync and link to the notes: Next Actions grouped by context, Projects with each project’s actions under it, Waiting For as a table. Read them, do not edit them; the plugin overwrites them.
• Weekly Review, a checklist note that is created once and never touched again, so you can tune it.

A card note carries the GTD fields as frontmatter properties: list, kind, context, project, who and since, plus the card id. Any other property you add is yours and stays local, so Dataview and Bases work on the notes like on any others. Sync runs when you open the vault, every few minutes while it is open (the interval is in the settings), and whenever you run GTD Brain: Sync now or click the sync icon in the ribbon. The status bar shows the last result.

Capture: make a note in Inbox

Capture is a new note in the GTD Brain/Inboxfolder. Right-click the folder, New note, type the thought as the title. If there is more to say, put it in the body. Do not sort while you capture; “book flights for the Berlin trip” is a fine inbox note and deciding what to do about it is a separate step. On the next sync it is a card in the Inbox column of the board, and from there in the phone app, in ChatGPT and in Claude.

It works the other way too. Capture on the phone, from the Telegram bot, or by telling ChatGPT to add something to your inbox, and the note is in your Inbox folder on the next sync, ready to be clarified at the desk.

Clarify: move the note and set a context

Clarifying an inbox note is a drag: move it from Inbox into the folder for what it is. A physical next step goes to Next Actions, an outcome that takes several steps goes to Projects, something you delegated goes to Waiting For, and an idea for later goes to Someday Maybe. The move is the decision; the plugin turns it into the right kind of card on the board.

For a next action, add a context property with the situation you need to be in: @calls, @computer, @errands, @home— the contexts on your board (the Next Actions overview lists them). If the action belongs to a project, add project with a link to the project note, for example [[Renew passport before summer trip]]. Obsidian’s Properties panel offers both as you type.

The Next Actions overview note regenerates on the next sync, grouped by context, with the project next to each action. When you want to work, open it and read the group for where you are.

Done with something? Delete the note (or move it into Archive). The card is archived on the board, never deleted, so a slip is one drag away from undone on the web app.

Projects: one note per outcome, actions linked to it

A project is a note in the Projects folder whose title is the outcome: “Paint the bedroom”, not “paint”. Its next actions live in Next Actions with the project property pointing at it. The Projects overview lists every project with its actions underneath and flags the ones with none, which is the one check that keeps projects from stalling.

Waiting For: who and since when

When you hand something off, move the note to Waiting For and add two properties: who you are waiting on and since when. The Waiting For overview renders them as a table, so chasing is a glance at the Since column.

Weekly review: one checklist note

The Weekly Review note is a checklist in three parts: get clear (collect, empty your head into Inbox, process Inbox to zero), get current (Next Actions, Projects, Waiting For, the calendar), get creative (Someday Maybe, new ideas). Each line links to the overview it refers to. Tick the boxes as you go and clear them at the end; the plugin never rewrites this note, so add your own lines.

The same board everywhere

The point of syncing rather than keeping the lists only in Markdown is that the board exists outside the vault. The web app shows the same columns and cards, with the project links and the who/since you set in frontmatter. The iPhone and Android apps show them too, which is where capture actually happens for most people. And because GTD Brain is an MCP server, ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code and the other assistants on the connect pagecan read and change the same board: ask “what are my next actions at the computer?” in a chat and it answers from the cards you clarified in Obsidian that morning.

Things worth knowing

• Only what is inside the GTD Brain folder is read or sent, and only the title, body and the six GTD properties. The rest of the vault is not touched.
• Conflicts are rare because sync is frequent, but when the same card changed on both sides since the last sync, the fields you changed in the note win and the board wins the rest.
• The overview notes and the Archive folder are generated; your writing belongs in the card notes and the Weekly Review note.
• The plugin sends no telemetry, in line with Obsidian’s developer policy. The only network traffic is the sync itself.
• The plugin and the sync are free. A GTD Brain subscription adds the AI clarifying and the full mobile apps, and it is the same subscription across web, iOS and Android.

Start

Install the plugin, sign in, and do your first brain dump as notes in the Inbox folder: one note per open loop, titles only, no sorting. Then drag each one into the folder where it belongs. That is a working GTD system in Obsidian, in about ten minutes, with a board behind it that your phone and your assistants can use. The full setup steps are also on the Obsidian connect guide.