Activity Atlas

A local, live activity timeline for every file in your Obsidian vault.

Activity Atlas turns Obsidian's live file events into compact, readable activity bursts. It is built for large vaults where a flat list of recently edited Markdown notes does not show the whole picture.

Live-only by design: Activity Atlas records changes while Obsidian is open. It does not scan the vault at startup, reconstruct changes made while Obsidian was closed, execute external commands, or use network services.

Screenshots

Dark theme

Light theme

Features

• Tracks file creation, modification, rename, and deletion.
• Receives Obsidian's live activity events for every file type; configured text formats additionally receive line-change statistics.
• Groups nearby events into collapsible activity bursts.
• Filters by path, day, operation, and extension.
• Includes a six-week activity calendar with accessible keyboard navigation.
• Coordinates multiple Obsidian instances with a writer lock so only one instance records.
• Uses no network services, telemetry, accounts, or advertising.

Scope and privacy

Capability	Contract
Network requests and telemetry	None
Shell commands and external processes	None
Vault inventory at startup	None
Reading user content	Only the changed text file, when line statistics are enabled for its extension
Writing user content	None
Changes made while Obsidian is closed	Not observed or reconstructed

Requirements

• Obsidian 1.13.0 or later on desktop or mobile.

Installation

Community Plugins

Activity Atlas is awaiting its initial Community directory listing. Once it is available:

1. Open Settings → Community plugins in Obsidian.
2. Select Browse and search for Activity Atlas.
3. Select Install, then Enable.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest GitHub release.
2. Create <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/activity-atlas/.
3. Copy the three files into that folder.
4. Reload Obsidian, then enable Activity Atlas under Community plugins.

Usage

Open Activity Atlas from the ribbon activity icon or run Activity Atlas: Open activity timeline from the command palette.

The timeline updates while Obsidian is open, recording each file event as it happens.

Calendar keyboard controls

When the activity calendar is open:

Key	Action
ArrowLeft / ArrowRight	Previous or next day
ArrowUp / ArrowDown	Previous or next week
Home / End	Monday or Sunday of the current week
PageUp / PageDown	Previous or next month
Shift+PageUp / Shift+PageDown	Previous or next year
Enter / Space	Select the focused day
Escape	Close the calendar and return focus to its button

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
Tracked text extensions	Common note, data, code, and web formats	Formats that receive line-change statistics
Exclude globs	Empty	Additional paths to ignore; the vault configuration folder is always excluded
Large file threshold	512 KB	Larger text files are tracked without line statistics
Live comparison budget	20 MB	Maximum text kept in memory during the current session to compute line-change statistics; not persisted to disk
Retention	90 days / 50,000 events	Bounds the local activity log
Burst window	10 minutes	Maximum gap between events in one burst

Local data

Runtime data stays under <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/activity-atlas/:

• activity.jsonl — bounded event history, including affected file paths and event metadata.
• writer.lock — multi-instance writer coordination.
• data.json — Obsidian-managed plugin settings and local state.

Comparison text used to calculate line statistics is bounded by the live comparison budget, remains in memory for the current session, and is not persisted.

Development

npm ci
npm test
npm run build

The production build writes main.js at the repository root. A release must attach main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css, and its tag must match manifest.json.

CI runs the test suite and production build. Tagged releases publish the three required plugin files with GitHub artifact attestations.

Origin and license

Activity Atlas began as a derivative of Vault Change Feed by tiyukains (@kains2866). The product, interface, and storage contract have since diverged substantially.

• Portions derived from Vault Change Feed are copyright (c) 2026 tiyukains.
• Activity Atlas modifications are copyright (c) 2026 Alek (AlekZen).

The combined work is distributed under the MIT License. MIT permits use, modification, redistribution, sublicensing, and sale, provided both copyright notices and the MIT permission notice remain with copies or substantial portions of the software.

This license grant is separate from Obsidian's Community plugin policy for derivatives, which governs eligibility for the official directory.

The current review state, evidence dates, reminder setup, and fallback procedure are recorded in the Community directory publication runbook.