Mindmaps

Mindmaps

A mindmap fence draws a left-to-right tree of rounded nodes — a quick way to see the structure of an idea, or of the note itself. The tree is laid out by a small built-in SVG renderer, so mindmaps need no external engine, follow the light/dark theme, and are already drawn in the published static export before any script runs.

Part of Visualization (see also Diagrams and Charts). Back to track.

A note's own structure

Leave the fence empty and it maps the surrounding note's heading tree — # at the root, ## branches, ### leaves. This block is empty in the source of this page, so what you see is this page's actual outline:

Drop one at the top of a long note and it doubles as a visual table of contents that can never go stale — the picture of the note's shape. For getting around a long note, every note already has a Contents outline in its aside, no fence required.

Writing a Markdown mindmap

A non-empty fence can use Markdown headings for the hierarchy and list items for leaves. Links stay interactive: ordinary Markdown links open their URL, and [[wiki links]] resolve to track notes:

```mindmap
# Vault

## Notes
- [[Syntax]]
- [[Diagrams]]

## Resources
- [Graphviz](https://graphviz.org/)
```

It renders as:

When to use which

• Mindmap — hierarchy and links expressed with ordinary Markdown headings and lists.
• Diagrams (Mermaid, Graphviz, D2, draw.io) — anything with cross-links, cycles, or labeled edges.
• Charts — numbers.