Archive Redirect

Archive remote URLs referenced in your markdown to a local cache, and transparently serve the cache when the note is rendered. Defends your vault against link rot without rewriting any markdown.

The problem

Notes that quote articles, tweets, or research often embed remote images, video, or audio:

![](https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/.../abc.jpg)
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/XYZ.png?name=orig)

When the original host disappears (the WeChat account is deleted, the tweet is removed, the CDN expires the URL), every embed in your vault silently breaks. The note still reads, but the visual context is gone.

What this plugin does

For every remote <img>, <video>, <audio> it encounters:

1. Archives the file to <dir>/_archive/<sha1-of-url>.<ext> (a sibling folder next to the markdown that referenced it).
2. Redirects the rendered element's src to the local archive at display time — in both Reading mode and Live Preview.
3. Leaves the markdown file untouched. The URL in your .md never changes. If you later view the file outside Obsidian, share it, or this plugin is uninstalled, the remote URL still works as a fallback.

The archive is content-addressed by URL hash, so the same URL appearing in multiple notes is stored once.

How it works

┌──────────────────────────┐
│  ![](https://remote.url) │   ← markdown stays as-is
└──────────┬───────────────┘
           │
           ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
   │  Scanner extracts URLs               │
   │  Policy decides which to archive     │   ← domain rules + media extension
   │  Downloader fetches with retry       │
   │  File saved at _archive/<sha1>.<ext> │
   └──────────────────────────────────────┘
           │
           ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
   │  At render time:                     │
   │  resolve(url) → vault path → swap    │   ← Reading + Live Preview
   │  if local present, else leave remote │
   └──────────────────────────────────────┘

Triggers

The plugin archives in three ways:

• On file modify: when you edit a markdown file, new remote URLs in it are queued for download.
• Manual scan: command Scan vault & archive remote resources walks every markdown file in scope.
• No render-time downloads. Display only swaps to local if the archive already exists.

Settings

Setting	Default	Purpose
Archive directory name	_archive	Subfolder name (sibling to each .md) that holds cached files.
Auto-archive on file modify	on	If off, only the manual scan command triggers downloads.
Included paths	(empty = whole vault)	Newline-separated vault paths to operate on. Example: raw/wechat.

Domain policies

Built-in rules in policies.ts:

Domain	Action	Notes
mmbiz.qpic.cn, res.wx.qq.com, mmbiz.qlogo.cn	archive	WeChat — requires Referer: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/
pbs.twimg.com	archive	Twitter / X images
video.twimg.com	skip	Twitter videos are large and the CDN is long-term stable
youtube.com, youtu.be, vimeo.com	skip	stream-only
(anything else)	archive only if URL has a media extension (.jpg/.png/.mp4/…)	prevents accidentally fetching HTML page URLs

Failure handling

• 3 attempts with [0, 1s, 3s] backoff.
• 15 second timeout per request.
• http:// URLs are automatically upgraded to https:// (Obsidian's requestUrl does not accept cleartext HTTP).
• Permanent statuses (400 / 401 / 403 / 404 / 410 / 451) skip retry.
• Failed downloads append a JSONL entry to <archive>/.failed.jsonl with URL, error, and timestamp.

Installation

Via BRAT (current)

While awaiting Community Plugins approval:

1. Install the BRAT plugin.
2. Command palette → BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing.
3. Enter semsevens/obsidian-archive-redirect.
4. Enable Archive Redirect in Community plugins.

Manual

Download main.js and manifest.json from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/archive-redirect/, then enable.

Limitations

• Desktop only. Uses Node's crypto module; mobile support requires swapping to Web Crypto (which is async) and is planned for a later release.
• No Live Preview widget replacement. The plugin mutates src after Obsidian renders the element. It does not interfere with other plugins (e.g. auto-embed) that work on page URLs.
• Large files block the main thread. The current downloader is synchronous from Obsidian's perspective. Acceptable for thousands of images; not yet tuned for large video archives.

License

MIT