howto.coytis.me

Quartz - Publishing Setup and Next Steps

3 min read

You do not want the know the fuckery that would’ve befallen had I not sorted out the ‘default off’ publishing shit, goddamn.

Notes from the initial setup session. words.coytis.me is live, pointing at Cloudflare Pages from the CoytisMe/quartz GitHub repo. Content is currently the Work/Microsoft folder with a manually copied sync workflow. Several things to improve.

1. Controlling What Gets Published (ExplicitPublish Plugin)

By default Quartz publishes everything in the content folder. To make publish: false (and publish: true) actually do something, enable the ExplicitPublish plugin.

In quartz.config.ts, find the plugins section and add it to the filters array:

filters: [
  Plugin.ExplicitPublish(),
],

With this enabled:

  • Notes with publish: true → published
  • Notes with publish: false → excluded
  • Notes with no publish key → excluded by default (opt-in model)

This is the safest approach — nothing goes live unless you’ve explicitly said so. All templates and the Claude Briefing already have publish: false added.

2. Syncing the Vault to Quartz (OneDrive → GitHub)

The symlink approach didn’t work because Git pushed the pointer rather than the files. Current workaround is manually copying the content folder. Better options:

Option A — PowerShell sync script (recommended)

A script that robocopy’s (or xcopy’s) the relevant vault folders into the Quartz content folder, then runs the git add/commit/push pipeline. One script, one run.

# Example structure
$source = "C:\Users\Rick\OneDrive - Coytis\Obsidian\Rick\Work\Microsoft"
$dest = "C:\Users\Rick\quartz\content"
 
robocopy $source $dest /MIR /XF "*.canvas"
 
Set-Location "C:\Users\Rick\quartz"
git add .
git commit -m "content sync $(Get-Date -Format 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm')"
git push

/MIR mirrors the source — deletions in vault also remove from content. Remove /MIR if you want additive-only sync.

Option B — GitHub Actions

Set up an Action that pulls from OneDrive on a schedule or trigger. More complex, probably overkill.

Option C — Quartz private content folder with .gitignore tricks

Keep content outside the repo and use a pre-build copy step. Also complex.

Recommended: Option A. Get the script working, save it to C:\Scripts\, wire it to a shortcut or StreamDeck button.

3. One-Button Publish Script

Full pipeline script — copy content, commit, push:

# publish-quartz.ps1
param(
    [string]$CommitMessage = "content sync $(Get-Date -Format 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm')"
)
 
$source = "C:\Users\Rick\OneDrive - Coytis\Obsidian\Rick\Work\Microsoft"
$dest = "C:\Users\Rick\quartz\content"
$repo = "C:\Users\Rick\quartz"
 
Write-Host "Syncing content..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
robocopy $source $dest /MIR /XF "*.canvas" | Out-Null
 
Write-Host "Committing and pushing..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
Set-Location $repo
git add .
git commit -m $CommitMessage
git push
 
Write-Host "Done. Cloudflare will deploy in ~1 min." -ForegroundColor Green

Save to C:\Scripts\publish-quartz.ps1. Run with:

C:\Scripts\publish-quartz.ps1

Or add a custom commit message:

C:\Scripts\publish-quartz.ps1 -CommitMessage "added exchange notes"

For StreamDeck: point a button at a .bat file that calls the script.

4. Styling — Getting It Cleaner

Quartz is styled via quartz\styles\custom.scss. It already looks decent but a few tweaks get it closer to Obsidian’s feel.

Font

Obsidian uses Inter by default. Add to custom.scss:

@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:wght@400;500;600&display=swap');
 
:root {
  --bodyFont: "Inter", sans-serif;
  --headerFont: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Colour scheme

Quartz uses CSS variables. Override in custom.scss to match Obsidian’s dark theme:

:root[saved-theme="dark"] {
  --background: #1e1e2e;
  --darkgray: #cdd6f4;
  --gray: #a6adc8;
  --lightgray: #313244;
  --highlight: #45475a;
  --tertiary: #89b4fa;
  --secondary: #cba6f7;
}

These are Catppuccin Mocha values — close to what you’ve already set up in Windows Terminal.

Other useful tweaks

  • quartz.layout.ts — controls sidebar, table of contents, backlinks placement
  • Can hide the graph view if you don’t want it public
  • Can disable the explorer sidebar for a cleaner single-column layout

Sources

Graph View