Help: org / org-roam keeps opening every note I have. Killing buffers does nothing.

Howdy. Apologies if this is a duplicate, I searched but couldn't seem to find anything. I'm in the middle of migrating my PKM system into org-roam. One issue I'm having is org-roam keeps opening every note in org-roam-directory. I close them, do some work, and suddenly they're back. I kill them, close emacs, reopen it, and BAM they're already there without me even doing anything. My current org config: ``` ;; ------------------------------------- ;; ORG-MODE ;; -------- ;; Custom startup stuff (defun mmacs/org-mode-setup () (org-indent-mode) (auto-fill-mode 0) (visual-line-mode 1)) ;; ;; org-mode (use-package org :hook (org-mode . mmacs/org-mode-setup) :config (setq org-ellipsis " ▾" org-hide-leading-stars t org-startup-folded t org-return-follows-link t)) ;; ------------------------------------- ;; ------------------------------------- ;; ORG-AGENDA ;; ---------- (setq org-agenda-files '("REDACTED/BECAUSE/REASONS") org-agenda-start-with-log-mode t org-log-done 'time org-log-into-drawer t) ;; ------------------------------------- ;; ------------------------------------- ;; ORG-ROAM ;; -------- (use-package org-roam :ensure t :init (setq org-roam-v2-ack t) :custom (org-roam-directory "/REDACTED/BECAUSE/REASONS") (org-roam-complete-everywhere t) (org-roam-capture-templates '(("d" "default" plain "%?" ;; sick and tired of these stupid names, just name it what I tell you! :if-new (file+head "${title}.org" "#+title: ${title}\n#+date: %U\n") :unnarrowed t))) :config (org-roam-setup) (org-roam-db-autosync-mode)) ;; ------------------------------------- ```

The reason for such action is your settings for Org-agenda-files. You shouldn't specify a directory. That directory will be opened everytime you open your Emacs.

It worked! Thanks a ton! edit: well, it worked, but now my TODOs will be missing. Any way to keep the directory but not open the files? It needs to be a directory, there's no way I could do TODOs in just one file.

There's a hack from [System Crafters](https://systemcrafters.net/build-a-second-brain-in-emacs/5-org-roam-hacks/). ``` ;; The buffer you put this code in must have lexical-binding set to t! ;; See the final configuration at the end for more details. (defun my/org-roam-filter-by-tag (tag-name) (lambda (node) (member tag-name (org-roam-node-tags node)))) (defun my/org-roam-list-notes-by-tag (tag-name) (mapcar #'org-roam-node-file (seq-filter (my/org-roam-filter-by-tag tag-name) (org-roam-node-list)))) (defun my/org-roam-refresh-agenda-list () (interactive) (setq org-agenda-files (my/org-roam-list-notes-by-tag "Project"))) ;; Build the agenda list the first time for the session (my/org-roam-refresh-agenda-list) ``` Basic idea is that it will find all roam nodes with a specific tag, then open those all as your agenda.

I may just have to rethink how I do TODOs then. This doesn't seem viable for hundreds or thousands of notes, as it's still opening every file, and every file in my knowledgebase is potentially a TODO file.

This has kept me from org-roam interested if you find a solution

What do you use instead?

I don't use org-roam but I don't see how it can create its knowledge graph without opening the files to read their contents. I believe it's intended for the use case where a person leaves an emacs daemon running in the background at all times.

I use this hack: ((org-agenda-files (append org-agenda-files (with-temp-buffer (call-process "grep" nil t nil "-lRE" "--include" "\*.org" "TODO|NEXT|WAITING|TODAY" "/path/to/my/roam/directory") (split-string (buffer-string) "\n" t))))) (sorry, the indentation is somehow broken) This greps the roam directory for org files containing one of the todo keywords I want and only adds these to org-agenda-files. I do this once during init (so new todos wont show), because I don't use roam that much, but I think you can do this dynamically with something like: (let ((org-agenda-files ...)) (org-agenda)) Anyway, grepping for todo keywords is much much faster, than loading all the roam org files and fully parsing them by org-mode.

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