I’ve used Trello for several years as my main kanban board for ideas and personal projects. While I like the tool, taking more control of my data and having deeper links between my notes and projects is more important going forward.

I started using Obsidian for note-taking in 2020. Everything is in a single directory, as files, interlinked, in git. It just works.

Obsidian has a large ecosystem of plugins available. The Obsidian Kanban Plugin is exactly what I need. It lets me create notes, represented as cards, in a board. I can then interlink these notes (cards) to any other note, such as my internal system documentation for the homelab.

Trello provides a way to export a board to JSON. I extracted the information I wanted from the JSON export using a Python script:

  • Lists
    • Name
    • Cards
  • Cards
    • Title
    • Description
    • Checklists
    • Comments

The information is converted to Markdown files matching the format of the Obsidian Kanban Plugin using the same script:

  • Each list is created as a heading in the markdown file for the board itself (<Boardname>.md)
  • Each card is created as a file (kanban/<board-name>/<card-name>.md) and added as a list item beneath the correct list heading in <Boardname>.md

An example card file (kanban/<board-name>/PiKVM.md):

---
title: PiKVM
created: 2022-11-26 - 12:46
board: <Boardname>
tags: [kanban, raspberry-pi]
---
Board: [[<Boardname>]]

> This card was imported from Trello: <Trello-Card-URL>

<Content>

# Comments

<date> <time>

<Comment 2>

---

<date> <time>

<Comment 1>

---

#kanban #raspberry-pi

I kept the URL to the Trello card in the event I want to go back and check the original.

Example of card list item in the list Ideas/Backlog in <Boardname>.md:

---

kanban-plugin: basic
...

---

## Ideas/Backlog

- [ ] [[PiKVM]]
...

The end result shown below.

From this:

To this:

I’m satisfied with the result. I get the same functionality I had before, and I own the data.

Updated: