Onboarding Existing Vault

Existing Vault Onboarding

Use this path when you already have scenes or a manuscript folder and want to hook them into Radial Timeline.

Common Obsidian Setup Paths

Radial Timeline works well with a few common vault setups. Pick one and stick with it:

• Existing manuscript folder inside a larger vault.
• Multi-book vault with one folder per book plus shared worldbuilding.
• Multiple vaults, one per project, with shared sets.

This page covers the existing vault flow. If you are starting fresh, see Onboarding-Fresh-Vault.

1. Choose a source folder

1. Decide the folder that contains your scene notes.
2. Set Source path to that folder in Settings -> Core -> General.
3. Keep non-scene notes outside the Source path if you want them ignored.

2. Map your metadata

• Minimum fields for Timeline view: Class: Scene, Act, Synopsis, Subplot.
• Chronologue mode needs When and Duration to place scenes in time.
• Progress mode needs Status and Publish Stage (Progress Stage) for tracking.
• If your frontmatter uses different keys, use Settings -> Custom Metadata Mapping.

See YAML-Frontmatter for the full schema.

3. Normalize ordering

• Scene order uses the leading number in the scene title.
• Act is scoped; update Act when moving scenes across acts.
• Use Narrative mode drag and drop after each act has at least one scene.

4. Add story beats (optional but recommended)

• Pick a system in Settings -> Core -> Story beats system, or select Custom to define your own.
• For custom systems: name your system, add beats, assign to acts, and drag to reorder.
• Use Create to generate beat set notes, or Merge to realign existing files after changes.
• Switch to Gossamer mode to visualize momentum.

5. Verify with key features

• Search timeline to confirm your fields are indexed.
• Manage subplots to clean up naming.
• Chronologue Shift sub-mode to check time gaps.
• Inquiry for corpus-level issues.