Hugo Connectome Theme is a Hugo theme for building online community notes with backlinks, a starter kit for digital gardens, knowledge bases, and networked note-taking sites.
What is Hugo Connectome Theme?
Hugo Connectome Theme is a Hugo theme that turns a static site generator into a connected note-taking platform. It takes Markdown content with double-bracket links and renders a static site with a backlink graph, linking navigation, and a command palette. The theme is developed by KausalFlow and tested on Hugo v0.111.3+extended.
Key Features
- Backlinks and network graph — an interactive graph built with AntV G6 that visualizes connections between notes.
- Command palette — a ninja-keys powered palette for quickly navigating to notes, previewing content, and running note commands.
- Preview links — hovering on double-bracket links shows a preview of the linked note without leaving the current page.
- Multiple notebooks — supports organizing notes into multiple topics or notebooks, each with its own graph.
- Hugo native — works as a standard Hugo theme, installable via git submodule, with exampleSite content as a starting point.
- Customizable — configuration via config.yaml, and built on the Hugo Bulma theme for a familiar structure.
Who is it for?
- Digital gardeners who maintain a public knowledge base and want backlinks and a graph view.
- Online community note-takers who share collaborative notes and need easy navigation between topics.
- Hugo developers who want a theme with backlinks, graph visualization, and a command palette for a notes or wiki site without building from scratch.
What can you do with it?
- Create a networked notebook: write notes in Markdown, link them with double brackets, and see the connections automatically rendered in a graph.
- Quick navigation: use the command palette to jump to any note, search content, and preview links.
- Run multiple topics: maintain separate notebooks for different projects or subjects, each with its own graph and backlinks.
How does it work?
- Add the theme to an existing Hugo site by running
git submodule add https://github.com/kausalflow/connectome themes/connectome, then copy the exampleSite content as boilerplate. - Or start from scratch by forking the demo repository and modifying config.yaml.
- The theme renders static HTML with no server-side dependencies; all interactive features run in the browser.
