Obsidian Related Notes

About the plugin

First, a note from the actual human that vibecoded this AI-powered and AI-authored experiment: This is an AI-generated plugin, using Google's Antigravity framework. I have no idea how the LLM vectors are calculated or used to find relevant notes. It seems to work really well for me.

My goal was to try Antigravity to see what it can do. It's simultaneously AMAZING and FRUSTRATING. But it built this thing, and I could never have done that on my own. I've been wanting a good Related Notes plugin for my Obsidian vault for years, and I finally caved in and built this. My goal was to let Antigravity do all of the coding - I didn't write any of it, and didn't edit anything directly. All additions, changes, bug fixes, etc. were all done through chatting with Gemini in the Antigravity interface.

The plugin comes with no warranty or support. Use at your own risk. It shouldn't delete your Obsidian vault or mine bitcoin or anything else, but who knows if Gemini went rogue. I may wind up abandoning this plugin. Or I may actively develop it. Who knows?

I've recorded a quick video tour of the plugin.

- D

And now, back to the AI-generated content…

A powerful Obsidian plugin that uses local AI to find and display notes semantically related to your current active note. Unlike simple tag or link matching, this plugin uses vector embeddings to understand the meaning of your notes.

Features

• 🧠 Semantic Search: Finds connections based on meaning, not just keywords.
• 🔒 Local & Private: Uses Ollama running locally on your machine. No data leaves your computer.
• ⚡ High Performance: Supports a binary vector storage format for fast loading and low memory usage.
• 🛡️ Resilient Indexing:
  • Auto-Save: Saves progress every 10 notes.
  • Resume Capability: Picks up where it left off if interrupted or crashed.
  • Cancellation: Stop indexing anytime; progress is saved.
• 📊 Index Statistics: View detailed stats on your index status, missing notes, and last run time.

Prerequisites

1. Ollama: You must have Ollama installed and running.
   • Download from ollama.com.
2. Embedding Model: Pull a text embedding model. We recommend nomic-embed-text.

   ollama pull nomic-embed-text

Installation

Manual Installation

1. Create a folder named obsidian-related-notes inside your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory.
2. Download main.js and manifest.json from the dist directory in this repository.
3. Place the downloaded files into the folder you created.
4. Reload Obsidian (or click "Reload plugins" in Settings).
5. Enable "Related Notes" in Settings > Community Plugins.

Development (Building from Source)

If you want to modify the plugin or build it yourself:

1. Clone this repository.
2. Run npm install to install dependencies.
3. Run npm run build to build the plugin.
4. Copy main.js and manifest.json to your vault's plugin folder.

Configuration

Go to Settings > Related Notes:

1. Ollama URL: The URL of your local Ollama instance (default: http://localhost:11434).
2. Model: The name of the embedding model to use (default: nomic-embed-text).
3. Vector Storage Format:
   • Binary (Recommended): Faster and uses significantly less disk space.
   • JSON (Legacy): Human-readable but slower and larger.
4. Max Related Notes: Control how many related notes appear in the sidebar (1-20).
5. Debug Mode: Enable this to see detailed logs in the developer console (useful for troubleshooting).

Features & Resilience

• Smart Indexing: Only re-indexes notes that have changed, making subsequent updates instant.
• Auto-Pruning: Automatically removes deleted notes from the index to keep results clean.
• Content Cleaning: Automatically strips out dataview, dataviewjs, and excalidraw code blocks so they don't skew your similarity results.
• Resilience:
  • Safe Mode: If a note fails to index (e.g., due to length), the plugin automatically retries with a smaller chunk of text.
  • Title-Only Mode: As a last resort, if the content is too problematic, it indexes just the title to ensure the note is still findable.

Troubleshooting

• "Ollama API error": Ensure Ollama is running (ollama serve) and the model is pulled (ollama pull nomic-embed-text).
• "EOF" Errors: This usually means the model crashed on a specific note. The plugin's new Safe Mode and Title-Only Mode should handle this automatically. Check the console (Toggle Debug Mode on) to see it in action.
• Nothing happens when clicking "Index All": Check the console for errors. If you have a massive vault, give it a moment to start.
• Modified notes not updating: The plugin checks the file's "modified time". If you just changed it, wait a few seconds or try indexing again.