Are.na Channels

Render Are.na channels as live, responsive masonry grids inside your Obsidian notes with a single code block. Works in both Reading view and Live Preview.

Unofficial. This plugin is an independent community project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Are.na. It uses the public Are.na API.

Usage

Add a code block to any note:

```arena
channel: arena-influences
```

The channel renders as a masonry grid that adapts its column count to the note width.

You can paste a full URL instead of a slug — it's extracted automatically:

```arena
channel: https://www.are.na/charles-broskoski/arena-influences
```

Per-block options

Any global setting can be overridden inside a block:

```arena
channel: arena-influences
columns: 300
gap: 20
variant: large
caption: description
description: true
link: false
fullwidth: false
```

Key	Values	Default
channel	slug or Are.na URL (required)	—
columns	target column width in px	240
gap	space between items in px	14
variant	small / medium / large / original	medium
caption	title / description / none (or on/off)	title
description	true / false	off
link	true / false	on
fullwidth	true / false	on

caption chooses what text appears under each block. description adds the block's description below the caption, collapsed to its first line — click it to read the rest. caption: true / false still work as aliases for title / none.

Settings

• Access token — a Personal Access Token from are.na/settings/personal-access-tokens. Required only for private channels; public channels work without one.
• Grid — default column width, gap, image quality, caption source, description preview, and Are.na links.
• Full width — notes containing an Are.na grid use the full pane width, ignoring "Readable line length". No CSS snippet or cssclasses frontmatter needed; disable globally or per block with fullwidth: false.
• Cache duration — how long fetched data is reused before refetching. Run Refresh Are.na grids from the command palette to force an update.

Network use

This plugin connects to the internet to do its job:

• api.are.na — to fetch the contents of the channels you embed. Your access token, if set, is sent only here as an Authorization header.
• Are.na image CDN (images.are.na / CloudFront) — block images are loaded directly from Are.na's image servers.

No other servers are contacted. No telemetry or usage data is collected. An Are.na account (Personal Access Token) is required only for private channels. The token is stored locally in your vault's plugin folder (data.json), in plain text.

Install

From the community store

Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search "Are.na Channels".

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Copy them into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/arena-channels/.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin under Community plugins.

Development

npm install
npm run dev      # watch build
npm run build    # production build + typecheck

License

MIT