Note Mate

A vault-connected sidebar assistant: persistent chat that searches and drafts with you, in-editor rewrite and explain shortcuts, plus checkpoints so you review or rewind AI edits cleanly.

It’s an Obsidian plugin. Plug in AI accounts you already use, chat beside your notes, pull in vault context, polish text where the cursor sits, and rewind changes when needed—still inside Obsidian.

What it does for you

Deep vault tooling

Notebook access

Under Settings → Note Mate, turn on the vault tools you want (grouped under tool permissions). Then the assistant can:

• Open notes by path or wiki link and quote what matters.
• Search by text or tags and follow links between notes.
• Create notes or edit what’s already there—everything stays traceable so you know what shifted.

Insights

Controlled separately from vault tooling. After a reply, optional cards surface takeaway angles—new vantage points, sharper questions, hooks worth promoting into notes. The goal is fresher momentum, not circling what you already said.

Everyday editor shortcuts

Right from the editor:

• Rewrite selection — expand, shorten, or polish highlighted text.
• Explain selection — ask clearly about confusing passages.
• Send to AI session — push the open file—plus cursor or selection—into chat for deeper back-and-forth.
• AI Edit History — see AI-driven edits and use checkpoints/history when you need to rewind.

Models and accounts

Add your own keys: OpenAI-compatible endpoints (including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and comparable hosts), Google Gemini, and saved profiles so switching models isn’t rewriting forms each time.

Optional extras (when you turn them on)

• Lookups — Web search, open a page from a URL, skim feeds—useful for research next to notes.
• Images — generate pictures and drop them straight into your vault (provider-dependent).
• Richer tooling — connect MCP servers for capabilities your admin or community provides.
• Skills — reusable instruction packs loaded from folders you choose—great for repeatable workflows.
• Embeddings (experimental) — connect an embedding provider so tools and skills can be relevance-ranked before entering the prompt, saving tokens. Vault-wide semantic search is not here yet; whole-library search “by meaning” is planned / TBD. Expect drift as this settles.
• Memory — stash short facts between sessions when you want continuity.
• JavaScript snippets (experimental) — run short scripts from chat for arithmetic or reshaping pasted text when enabled. Executes through the plugin, not a hardened sandbox; expect sizeable shifts between releases.

Platforms & languages: Runs on desktop and mobile (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android).
UI copy ships in English, 日本語, 한국어, 简体中文, and 繁體中文—defaults follow locale; overrides live in plugin settings.

Installation

Community plugins (recommended)

1. In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins.
2. Search Note Mate, then choose Install and Enable.

Manual install

1. Download main.js, styles.css, and manifest.json from the latest release.
2. Inside your vault, create .obsidian/plugins/ai-note-mate/ if it doesn’t exist.
3. Copy those three files into that folder.
4. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin under Settings → Community plugins.

First-time setup

1. Open Settings → Note Mate.
2. Add at least one Provider profile: an OpenAI-compatible endpoint or Gemini, plus your model and key.
3. Optionally wire integrations—you can skip these until something on the roadmap needs them:
   • Image generation — saves generated visuals into your vault when enabled.
   • Embeddings (experimental) — provider needed for embedding-based tool/skill filtering (saves tokens). Not for vault-wide semantic search yet; that mode is planned / TBD.
   • MCP servers — connect external MCP servers for extra tooling.
   • Skill folders — where optional instruction bundles live on disk.
   • Tool permissions — fine-grained control over which vault moves the automation may attempt.

Building from source

For people who want to compile the plugin locally:

• Needs: Node.js 18+ and npm.
• Install: npm install
• Build: npm run build (or npm run dev for watch mode)
• Checks: npm run lint and npm run test

License

MIT License

Author

ialex32x

Support

If this plugin helps your daily notes, consider buying me a coffee.