DataDeck

Your CSV files, alive inside Obsidian. DataDeck opens plain .csv files as rich, editable views — cards, kanban, an editable table, charts with best-fit lines and formula overlays, a habit dashboard, a tasks board, a budget tracker with per-category rollups against a spending limit, a one-entry-at-a-time focus reader, and an interactive travel map. Everything edits in place and writes straight back to the one canonical CSV file: no database, no shadow copies, no lock-in. Your data stays a text file that diffs, syncs, and outlives any tool.

Screenshots — chart, kanban, tasks board, budget tracker, and the travel map

Highlights

• Eleven view modes, auto-offered based on the columns in the file — a books CSV gets a library, a habit log gets a dashboard, a tasks file gets a project board, an expenses CSV gets a budget tracker, a travel log gets a world map, a Start/End dated log gets a Gantt-lite timeline.
• Everything is editable — click a cell, toggle a habit, drag nothing: edits debounce-save back to the CSV. Notes-style columns render and edit as Markdown.
• Charts like a tiny ggplot: scatter/line of any column pair, color-by category (hue), size-by, per-series least-squares fits with R², y = f(x) formula overlays, week/month bucketing, rolling-average smoothing, bar aggregates for categorical axes, and one-click PNG export.
• Embed blocks put live views inside any note: csv-view (table / cards / kanban), csv-chart, csv-tasks (a cross-file tasks board), csv-random (quote of the day), and csv-add (a mobile-friendly entry form).
• Sync-safe saves — if the file changed on disk while you were editing (another device, another tab), the other version is stashed to Archive/ instead of being silently overwritten.
• Works on mobile. Compact toolbars, one-scroll modals, touch-friendly pickers.

Installation

Until DataDeck is in the community store:

• Via BRAT: add SVM0N/datadeck as a beta plugin.
• Manual: grab main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/datadeck/, then enable DataDeck in Settings → Community plugins.

The travel view's world map is bundled straight into main.js at build time (no separate world-map.svg to copy) — Obsidian's plugin installer only ever fetches those three files, for community-store installs too.

Quick start

1. Open any .csv file — DataDeck takes over the tab and picks a sensible view from the columns it finds.
2. Switch views with the toolbar dropdown; ⚙ Config sets per-file column roles (title, category, status, notes, image…), column types (checkbox / categorical / date), and the default view.
3. + Add opens an entry form with the right control per column: dropdowns for categorical columns, a date picker for dates, toggles for 0/1 habit columns, a Markdown textarea for notes.
4. No CSV yet? Run a palette command: Create tasks / travel / habit tracker / chart / timeline file scaffolds one preconfigured for its view.

View modes

The toolbar dropdown offers only the modes that make sense for the file's columns:

Mode	Appears when…	What it shows
Table	always	Editable spreadsheet: resizable columns, click-to-sort headers, sticky header
Cards	any groupable column	A library grouped by category — status dots, star ratings, tags, cover images, per-file sort
Kanban	any groupable column	Columns by category (or any column via "Group by" — year columns bucket into decades), status subgroups, inline note editing
Chart	a numeric column (2+ rows)	Scatter/line of any column pair with hue, size-by, fits, formulas, smoothing, bucketing, and bar aggregates — see Charts
Dashboard	a date column	Habit tracker: daily toggles, progress chart, streaks, per-habit GitHub-style calendars
Tasks	due/priority columns, or task-like type values	Project board: rows grouped by project, split into Tasks / Idea / Note sections, click-to-toggle done, overdue flags, filter by project / type / done-or-open
Timeline	a Start column plus an End/Due column	Gantt-lite horizontal timeline: one row per entry, drawn as an arrow spanning Start → End against a shared time axis; open-ended entries stretch to today, a dashed line marks "now", filter by category
Budget	a Price/Cost/Amount/Total column (or one assigned in ⚙ Config)	Items grouped by category with per-category subtotals and a grand total, set an inline spending limit and the total turns blue under it, red over
Stats	a category/status/rating/author column	Bar-chart insights: status breakdown, categories, rating histogram, entries per year — bars click through to the filtered library
Focus	any non-empty file	One entry at a time with big typography — built for quotes and vocabulary. ←/→ keys navigate
Travel	country + trip-date columns	World choropleth, trip timeline, per-country day totals, residency day-counters — see Travel view

Charts

Pick Chart in the toolbar (or embed a csv-chart block):

• X / Y — any numeric or date column; a date X renders a connected time series, numeric pairs render as scatter dots.
• Color — ggplot-style hue: one colored series per value of a categorical column.
• Size — a numeric column mapped to point radius (area-true sqrt scale).
• Best fit — per-series least-squares line with the equation and R² (phrased as an per-day trend for date axes).
• Smooth — a 7-day rolling average drawn over faint raw dots.
• By week / month — bucket a time series with a sum / avg / count aggregate ("km per week, one line per person").
• Bar mode — pick a categorical X and the chart becomes bars with a count / sum / avg aggregate; hue makes grouped bars; comma-separated columns (genres, tags) count once per value.
• y = f(x) overlay — type 2x^2 - 3x + 1 or 10 sin(x/2); parsed by a small built-in evaluator (+ - * / % ^, parentheses, implicit multiplication, sin cos tan sqrt log ln exp abs floor ceil round min max pow, pi/e). No eval.
• ⬇ PNG — saves the chart as an image next to the CSV.

Embed blocks

Live views inside any note. All paths resolve like links: a bare name is a sibling of the note, ../ walks up, and anything else is vault-relative.

csv-view — table / cards / kanban in a note

```csv-view
file: ../movies.csv
mode: kanban             ← table | cards | kanban   (default: table)
height: 480              ← optional max content height in px
collapse: Removed, Done  ← optional: card groups collapsed by default
```

Fully editable — inline cells, status chips, the entry expander, + Add, and delete-with-undo all write back to the source CSV. Other open views of the same file re-sync automatically.

csv-chart — a chart (or pure function plot) in a note

```csv-chart
file: ../health.csv      ← omit for a formula-only plot
x: date                  ← default: date column, else first numeric
y: weight                ← default: first numeric column ≠ x
hue: person              ← optional color-by column
size: effort             ← optional numeric column → point radius
agg: sum                 ← aggregate for bar mode / bucket (count | sum | avg)
bucket: week             ← date X only: week | month buckets
smooth: true             ← date X only: rolling mean (true = 7 days, or a number)
fit: linear              ← best-fit line(s) with equation + R²
formula: 0.5x + 2        ← y = f(x) overlay; the whole plot when there's no file
xmin: -10                ← formula-only domain (default -10 … 10)
xmax: 10
height: 280
```

Read-only; re-renders when the source CSV changes.

csv-tasks — a cross-file tasks board

```csv-tasks
folder: Projects         ← scan recursively for task-shaped CSVs ("/" = whole vault)
files: extra.csv         ← and/or an explicit comma-separated list
height: 600
```

Merges task rows from many CSVs into one board. Columns map onto a canonical set (Title / Type / Project / Priority / Due / Status / Notes) by name aliases — deadline, state, kind, area… all resolve. A file without a Project column uses its basename as the project, so one-CSV-per-project folders just work. Every edit writes back to the row's source file; right-click a row for "Open source".

csv-random — a random entry (quote of the day)

```csv-random
file: ../quotes.csv
field: Quote             ← optional; defaults to the first column
```

Re-rolls on every render and via its ↻ button — made for daily-note templates.

csv-add — an entry form in a note

```csv-add
file: ../habits.csv
```

A compact, grouped add/update form (date pre-filled with today, toggles for habit columns, dropdowns with a custom escape hatch). On habit-tracker files it pre-fills from the existing row for the picked date, so updating a day never wipes what's already logged.

Travel view

For a flat travel CSV with these columns:

date_entered,date_left,country,city,visa_status,notes,source,resolved

• country is ISO-2 (US, FR, …); source is confirmed, inferred (e.g. photo-derived), or conflict.
• Confirmed countries render gold; photo-only countries blue; conflict rows and photo rows overlapping a confirmed trip are excluded from counts.
• Click a country (map, table, or timeline) for a per-country trip panel.
• Blank/partial dates (2022-06-??) are allowed — visited-but-undated. A blank date_left counts as an ongoing stay ("📍 Currently in …").

Residency counters

Configurable day-gauges (e.g. Schengen 90/180) render in the travel view. Each rule counts days in the listed countries within a window (calendar year / rolling N days / all time), minus exempt visa rows, against a threshold. Add rules in Settings → DataDeck → Residency rules. These are indicators, not legal or tax advice.

Anki sync

The 🎴 Anki toolbar button pushes rows to Anki as flashcards — great for quotes and vocabulary files. One Basic note per row: the front is the title column (or your ⚙ Config pick), everything else joins onto the back. Decks are named after the file and re-syncs skip cards that already exist, so it's safe to click repeatedly.

Requires the AnkiConnect add-on and the Anki desktop app running; desktop-only (it talks to http://127.0.0.1:8765).

Commands

• Add entry to current CSV — the + Add form, hotkey-able.
• Cycle view mode — steps through the file's valid views.
• Create tasks / travel / habit tracker / chart / timeline file — scaffold a new CSV preconfigured for that view.

Privacy & network use

• All data stays in your vault. No telemetry, no analytics, no network calls — with one exception: the optional Anki sync button talks to AnkiConnect on localhost (127.0.0.1:8765) and only when you click it.
• Per-file settings live in the plugin's data.json inside your vault.

Development

npm install
npm run build        # bundle main.ts → main.js (esbuild)
npm run dev          # watch build
npm run test:all     # unit + jsdom view-smoke tests (no Obsidian needed)
npm run typecheck    # tsc --noEmit

To deploy straight into your own vault while developing, point the plugin at it once — npm run deploy copies the built assets into local symlinks that you create (they're gitignored):

ln -s "<your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/datadeck" datadeck
ln -s "<second-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/datadeck" datadeck-work   # optional
npm run build:deploy

Vault-touching dev tooling reads the OBSIDIAN_VAULT environment variable for your vault's path (no default).

main.ts holds the CardView lifecycle and plugin entry point; each view renderer and feature lives in src/ as a free function taking the view — the same functions power the full-page views and the embed blocks. Tests run the renderers against a jsdom DOM with Obsidian's DOM helpers polyfilled (test-support/); every view has smoke coverage.

See docs/ for architecture, CSS-class, and dev-workflow notes.

License

MIT