Zero to Markdown: the onboarding path 🚀

New to a team that runs on markdown (notes in Obsidian, sites and wikis on GitHub) and none of those words mean anything yet? This page is for you. Work through it in order; each step builds on the last. Budget a couple of hours total, spread over a few days is fine.

(Team leads: this is the path we use to onboard people at Life Itself. Point your newcomers here.)

Step 1: Learn markdown itself (~20 min)

Markdown is just text with a few extra characters: **bold**, # headings, [links](url). Truly, this is the easy part.

• Read Markdown Basics
• Do the interactive CommonMark tutorial (10 minutes, worth it)

You're done when: you can write a note with headings, a list, a link and bold text without looking anything up.

Step 2: Publish something real (~20 min)

Before any theory about git: make a live website, because it's fast and motivating and shows you where all this goes.

• Follow Tutorial 1: create a website from scratch – GitHub account, one repo, one click of publish. 🎉

You're done when: you've edited a page on GitHub's website and watched your live site update.

Step 3: Edit like the team does: Obsidian + GitHub Desktop (~40 min)

Editing in the browser is fine; the comfortable daily setup is files on your computer, edited in Obsidian, synced with GitHub Desktop.

• Follow Tutorial 2: edit your site locally
• Key ideas you'll pick up: cloning, committing (saving a snapshot), pushing (sharing it), and [[wiki-links]]

You're done when: you can make a change in Obsidian and get it live via GitHub Desktop without help.

Step 4: Knowledge-base basics (~30 min)

Most of what the team keeps in markdown isn't websites. It's shared knowledge: notes, docs, little structured collections.

• Do create a simple catalog of anything – teaches frontmatter (data fields in notes) and linking between notes
• Skim markdown knowledge bases for the picture of how it hangs together
• Optional video: markdown KB setup end-to-end

You're done when: frontmatter and wiki-links both make sense.

Step 5: Working with others (~20 min)

When you're editing shared repos, changes go through review.

• Read Tutorial 3: collaborating with branches and pull requests (outline form for now) and the GitHub FAQs

You're done when: you know why you'd make a branch and what a pull request is.

What next?

You're operational 🎉 From here: what you can build with markdown, why we work this way, and where else markdown shows up. Welcome to the way of markdown.