Agentic Note References

An Obsidian plugin that copies a formatted note reference to the clipboard — ready to paste into any AI agent chat.

How it works

Editor mode (Live Preview / Source)

1. Place your cursor on a line, or select a range of lines.

2. Press Ctrl+Alt+I (or run Copy agentic citation from the command palette).

3. A picker appears — type to filter, arrow keys or mouse to choose:

   • Default — built-in ref mode; uses the Default citation template from Settings
   • Custom modes — ref modes you define in Settings, in the order you set
   • Reading mode — built-in preset read mode; uses the Reading mode template

4. The formatted citation is copied to the clipboard.

Reading mode

Press Ctrl+Alt+I while in Reading mode and the same picker appears.

• Reading mode is listed first and uses the Reading mode template.
• Ref modes remain available too; when selected, they use the note's current editor cursor/selection for line numbers.

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Settings

Go to Settings → Agentic Note References.

Path format

Controls how {{filename}} resolves in every template:

Option	Example
File name only (default)	My Note
Relative to vault root	folder/My Note.md
Absolute filesystem path	/home/user/vault/folder/My Note.md

Editor mode — Default citation template

The template used by the built-in Default ref mode in the picker.

Default value:

[[{{filename}}]] — Lines {{from}}–{{to}}

Here is the referenced section:

Reading mode template

The template used by the built-in Reading mode option in the picker.

Default value: [[{{filename}}]]

Custom ref modes

Click Add ref mode to create a new mode. Each mode has:

• Name — shown in the picker list
• Template — the text that gets copied

Use the ↑ / ↓ buttons to reorder modes. Their order in Settings is the order they appear among the ref modes in the picker.

Template placeholders

Placeholder	Expands to	Available in
{{filename}}	File reference per path format	All modes
{{from}}	Starting line number (1-indexed)	Ref modes only
{{to}}	Ending line number (1-indexed)	Ref modes only
{{lines}}	Line 5 or Lines 3–7	Ref modes only

In the Reading mode template, {{from}}, {{to}}, and {{lines}} are not available — use only {{filename}}.

Use \n for explicit newlines in any template.

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Installation

git clone <repo> ~/.obsidian/plugins/agentic-note-references
cd ~/.obsidian/plugins/agentic-note-references
npm install && npm run build

Enable Agentic Note References in Settings → Community Plugins.

Development

Build and sync to your vault in one step:

./sync.sh

Options:

-n, --no-build      Skip npm build (copy existing main.js)
-v, --vault <path>  Target vault root  (default: ~/obsidian/notes)
-s, --src   <path>  Plugin source dir  (default: ~/github/obsidian-agentic-note-references)

After syncing, reload the plugin in Obsidian: Settings → Community Plugins → toggle off/on.