News from TiddlyWiki, 19th December 2025
Community Survey Results
In August we completed the TiddlyWiki User Survey for 2025. This brief, anonymous survey was designed to give us insight into the needs of TiddlyWiki users.
The results of this survey now inform the future developments, helping us focus on what would make TiddlyWiki better for you, both as software and as a community. Here are a few key observations from the survey results:
About half of the participants described themselves as programmers. A solid fifth of the userbase has written custom JavaScript for their wiki!
Use is often personal, with just 1⁄3 sharing their wiki to the WWW or an intranet.
Most of the main use cases are as a knowledge base, note-taking and journaling. However, half the participants also included uses for task and project management (including CRM).
Participants overwhelmingly had a positive impression of TiddlyWiki, the key things people appreciate are the flexibility, privacy and security that it offers.
Key areas for improvement are: issues with documentation and tutorials (as well as ease of use in general), the out-of-the-box experience, giving more consideration to cross-device syncing, and better support for Markdown.
More observations and the full discussion on the results of the survey are available here on talk.tiddlywiki.org
Interview with Saq Imtaz - Release Manager for Release 5.4.0
I sat down with Saq Imtaz - the Release Manager for then next upcoming release and for almost an hour I was really impressed by this amazing volunteer to the community. Highlights from that discussion included:
Saq, fascinating journey from a trained medical doctor, to non-profit work in education in the sub-Sahara that lead to TiddlyWiki Classic and then a Masters in UX Design
Currently there is very good progress on Release v5.4.0 with work halfway complete on the critical backlog and lots of push requests (PRs) merged. The plan is to target a release in January or February 2026. Regular releases are being planned so that the milestone releases introduce new features more often.
Saq had really positive things to say about the community and some key individuals contributing to Release v5.4.0
We discussed the policy around backwards compatibility and how TiddlyWiki can move forward.
Finally we discussed how Saq himself uses TiddlyWiki, from his own plugins, and note taking on fine wines and teas, to some reporting tools for social workers in Central Asia.
The full transcript is available here
TW5-Graph
TW5-Graph is a TiddlyWiki plugin which allows for the creation of elaborate graphs with a wide range of customisable functionality.
It is the spiritual successor to TiddlyMap which has served the community well for years. TW5-Graph is a redesign of the idea from the ground up. Instead of being graphing plugin for TiddlyWiki, it’s a framework to allow for graphing and charting libraries to integrate.
With TW5-Graph you can:
Quickly create and edit graphs through a simple point-and-click GUI
Use wikitext widgets to create customised graphs and template to exactly match your needs
Easily create dynamic graphs to represent changing state or individual tiddlers
There’s loads TW5-Graph can do for you. Check out its demo website here.
The plugin is a masterpiece by its creator Flibbles (aka sci-fi novelist Cameron Fisher), who had this to say:
My reason for getting involved with TiddlyWiki to begin with was because it was suited for the needs of my actual career as a novelist. Every time [it] falls short, I make a plugin, and sometimes make those plugins public […] Tiddlymap worked for me, until it didn’t. So I made TW5-Graph.
TLDR: A Discussion on Artificial Intelligence
In July this year, I posted an entry to the banner competition for the v5.3.7 Release. Little did I know that my use of the AI tool, Sora, to produce that small artwork would reignite a controversy about the use of AI within the TiddlyWiki community. It wasn’t the first debate on the topic, nor likely the last. The community itself is adjusting to this technology and being very pragmatic about its use and potential misuse. Here are just a few points for and against AI that were discussed:
It enables those without certain skills (e.g. drawing, coding) produce work that would be impossible or very difficult for them otherwise.
AI is “a tool that people can master” to improve productivity and capabilities, and not necessarily replace human creativity.
Without human review, AI-generated content risks being misleading, or low-quality and what’s more long winded and verbose. That’s problematic for content intended for education and sharing among a community.
AI can mass produce content and without synthesis, editing or curating of content, it can become generic, mechanical, or formulaic and generally a waste of time for readers to sift through.
More of this summary (generated with the help of AI) is available here.
In the end the suggestion is to add to the code of conduct: not to post the raw output of AI generated content. There are situations where AI-derived content is acceptable (eg providing a link to a chat for reference). But the valuable contributions to the community are those that people have made themselves, either from scratch or from AI tools as input.
Next Edition
We interview Elise Springer, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University.. and explore how TiddlyWiki serves her work.
There will be a showcase from talk.tiddlywiki.org of how features in TiddlyWiki are being used in creative ways.