Advanced Bases

Three focused, Notion-style views for Obsidian Bases: Cards Compact, Feed, and Timeline. A lightweight companion to Obsidian's native Bases views.

Views

Cards Compact

A sibling to Obsidian's native Cards view that adds a Compact toggle:

• Normal mode — a cover image plus labeled property rows, matching the look of native Cards.
• Compact mode — a lean row with an optional cover, a file-type icon, the title, and property values shown as small inline pills.
• Configurable cover image property, image fit (cover/contain), aspect ratio, and card width.

Feed

A vertically scrolling feed of full note previews, rendered as Markdown:

• Notes lazy-render as they scroll into view and unmount when they scroll out, so large Bases stay smooth.
• Long notes truncate with a fade and a "Show more" expander.
• An optional New note toolbar button creates a note in a configured folder from a configured template, linked back to the current Base.
• Configure which properties are shown above each note's preview.

Timeline

A Gantt-style timeline for date-bearing notes:

• Notes plot as bars (start → end date) or single markers (no end date) on horizontal lanes.
• Lanes are grouped by any property, each auto-assigned a color from a fixed palette — click a lane's color swatch to override it.
• Ctrl+scroll (or pinch) to zoom, plain scroll to pan; a vertical marker highlights today's date.
• Falls back to a note's creation date when no date property is set, so every note always has a place on the timeline.

Built-in help

Every view has a small ? icon in the Bases toolbar with a quick reference for that view's controls.

Installation

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Create a folder named advanced-bases inside your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory and place the three files there.
3. Reload Obsidian (or disable/re-enable Community Plugins) and enable Advanced Bases in Settings → Community plugins.

Community Plugins browser

Once accepted into Obsidian's community plugin directory, you'll be able to search for Advanced Bases directly in Settings → Community plugins → Browse.

Usage

Open any .base file, use the layout picker in the Bases toolbar, and choose Cards Compact, Feed, or Timeline. Each view's configuration (date properties, image properties, lane grouping, etc.) is set per-view from the same toolbar, the same way you'd configure any native Bases view.

Plugin-wide settings — the Feed view's new-note folder/template and the Timeline's today-marker color — are under Settings → Advanced Bases.

Development

npm install
npm run dev        # esbuild watch mode
npm run build       # production build
npm run typecheck   # tsc --noEmit
npm test             # vitest

The plugin is plain TypeScript bundled with esbuild (CommonJS, no framework), tested with Vitest, and localized into 15 languages (src/i18n.ts).

Project layout

src/
  main.ts                 plugin entry point, registers the three views
  compactCardsView.ts      Cards Compact view
  feedView.ts              Feed view
  timelineView.ts          Timeline view (+ timelineAxis.ts, timelineLayout.ts)
  shared/groupColor.ts      shared per-group color palette + overrides
  settings.ts               plugin settings tab
  i18n.ts                   15-locale string tables
  viewHelp.ts                shared "?" toolbar help control

License

MIT