Busy Goblins

Build reusable chains of AI operations on your Obsidian notes. Process, write, and rewrite Markdown files using a local Ollama model, then save your workflows as presets and run them in one click.

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What it does

Busy Goblins lets you wire together a sequence of AI steps — called a chain — where each step reads from a file or folder, runs it through a local language model with a prompt you provide, and writes the result somewhere. The output of one step can feed directly into the next.

A chain you build once can be saved as a preset and reused forever.

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Prerequisites

• Ollama installed and running locally (ollama serve)
• At least one model pulled, e.g. ollama pull qwen2.5:32b
• Obsidian desktop (plugin requires desktop — it uses Ollama's local API)

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Installation

From the community store

1. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for Busy Goblins
3. Install and enable

Manual install

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy them into .obsidian/plugins/busy-goblins/ inside your vault
3. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins

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Setup

1. Open Settings → Busy Goblins
2. Set your Ollama URL (default http://localhost:11434 is correct for most installs)
3. Set your Default model to whichever model you have pulled (e.g. qwen2.5:32b)
4. Optionally set a Presets folder where saved chains will be stored (default: _AI/BusyGoblins/Presets)

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How to use

Open the panel

Click the chain icon in the ribbon, or run Open panel from the command palette.

Build a chain

Each chain is made of one or more blocks. Click + Add Block to add blocks and configure each one:

Operation — what the block does:

• Process — reads a source file or folder, sends it to the AI with your prompt, writes the response to a new destination. The source is never modified.
• Write — sends a prompt to the AI with no source file. Pure generation.
• Rewrite — reads a source file or folder, sends it to the AI with your prompt, and overwrites the source with the response. Destructive — use dry-run first.

Source — where the block reads from:

• File — a single Markdown file
• Folder — all Markdown files in a folder (combined into one context for Process/Write; processed individually for Rewrite)
• Previous — the output from the block above (available on Block 2 and later)

Prompt file — a Markdown file in your vault containing the instructions for the AI. Optionally add a model: key in the frontmatter to override the default model for that block:

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model: llama3:70b
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Summarise the following notes into bullet points...

Destination — where the output goes (Process and Write only):

• File — write to a specific file
• Folder — write into a folder with a base filename you provide. Adds a counter suffix if the file already exists (unless Allow overwrite is on)
• None — hold the output in memory only, passing it to the next block via Previous

Run a chain

Click Run. Blocks execute top to bottom. The Run button is disabled with a tooltip explaining any missing configuration.

Click Dry Run first to preview exactly what the chain will read, which model it will call, and what it will write — without making any changes.

Save and load presets

Click Save Preset to name and save the current chain as a .json file in your presets folder. Click Load Preset to browse and restore a saved chain.

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Settings reference

Setting	Description
Ollama URL	Address where Ollama is running. Default: http://localhost:11434
Default model	Fallback model when a prompt file has no model: frontmatter
Presets folder	Vault path where preset .json files are stored
Prompts folder	Restrict the prompt file picker to a specific folder. Leave blank to search the whole vault
Protected paths	Vault paths Busy Goblins will never overwrite. Rewrite blocks targeting these paths are blocked. Process/Write blocks with Allow overwrite enabled are also blocked
Show token cost estimate	After each run, show estimated token usage and approximate cloud API cost for comparison

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Acknowledgements

Busy Goblins evolved from an earlier plugin by the same author called The Director, which handled single-agent folder runs. Busy Goblins is a ground-up rebuild with chaining, presets, and a broader set of operations.

The FolderSuggest component is adapted from Synod by slaymish, used under MIT licence.

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Support

If you find Busy Goblins useful, you can buy me a coffee.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE