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Brian Sunter

Obsidian Insights

An Obsidian plugin that generates live AI writing insights, connections, counter-arguments, and suggested edits while you write.

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TypeScript Obsidian Plugin AI OpenAI Anthropic Knowledge Management
Cover image for Obsidian Insights

Overview

Obsidian Insights is a desktop plugin that watches the active Markdown note and generates live writing feedback in a right sidebar. It can suggest concrete improvements, next ideas, counter-arguments, references, and connections to other notes in the vault.

I built it to make the AI assistant feel closer to a writing partner than a separate chat window. The plugin stays anchored to the note you are already editing, refreshes as the document changes, and keeps the output organized as structured insight cards instead of a long conversational transcript.

Features

Live insight sidebar

  • Right-pane sidebar with generated insight cards for the active note
  • Manual regenerate command for focused review passes
  • Auto-run mode with a debounce and document-change threshold so feedback does not fire on every keystroke
  • Per-category target counts for improvements, next ideas, connections, counter-arguments, references, and custom guidance

Incremental refreshes

Instead of regenerating every card after every edit, the plugin keeps a snapshot of the previous run and re-anchors existing insights against the current document. Small changes can update locally, while larger changes trigger a revise call or a full regenerate when the note has drifted too far.

This keeps token usage lower and makes the sidebar feel less jumpy while writing.

Vault-aware research

The model can call local vault tools during a run:

  • Search notes
  • Read note slices
  • List backlinks and outgoing links
  • Inspect note metadata
  • Find notes by tag
  • List recent notes

For semantic search, the plugin can use a local qmd binary when available. If QMD is missing or disabled, it falls back to an in-process lexical scan so the plugin still works without external setup.

One-click fixes

For concrete edit suggestions, the sidebar can ask the model for a surgical replacement of the cited lines. Fixes are applied through the editor so changes stay visible and undo-friendly.

Provider support

The plugin supports several model providers through the Vercel AI SDK:

  • Anthropic
  • OpenAI
  • Google Gemini
  • OpenRouter / OpenAI-compatible endpoints

Provider credentials stay in the vault-local plugin data file. There is no hidden telemetry; note text is sent only when an insight or auto-fix run is triggered.

Technology stack

  • TypeScript Obsidian plugin
  • esbuild bundle to a single main.js
  • Vercel AI SDK for streaming model calls and tool execution
  • Zod schemas for validating model-submitted insight cards
  • Obsidian Plugin API for commands, settings, views, editor access, and vault reads
  • Optional local QMD process for semantic vault search

Project shape

plaintext
src/
├── agent/       # model provider selection, prompts, tool schemas, auto-fix
├── runner/      # editor watching, run orchestration, incremental re-anchoring
├── ui/          # sidebar view, insight cards, thinking panel, fix application
├── util/        # fetch shim, text diffing, qmd process bridge, hashing
├── settings.ts  # provider, trigger, search, output, and guardrail settings
└── main.ts      # plugin lifecycle and command registration

The main plugin entry point stays small; most behavior lives in focused modules so the model loop, editor integration, and UI can evolve independently.