Goal Tree

Goal Tree is a local-first Obsidian plugin by Muhammad Tahoun for managing life Areas, Goals, Projects, Tasks, Subtasks, habits, meetings, and simple personal lists.

Structure

Area → Goal → Project → Task → Subtask

Areas are permanent contexts such as Work, Family, or Self Development. They have no dates, completion status, or risk color. Every other level rolls progress upward from its children using severity: Low, Medium, High, or Critical.

Type	Allowed parent	Dates
Area	None	None
Goal	Area or Goal	Start and optional Due
Project	Goal	Start and optional Due
Task	Project	Start, optional planned day/time, optional Due
Subtask	Task or Subtask	Start, optional planned day/time, optional Due

Views

View	Purpose
Overview	Current goal progress, today totals, life balance, and attention summary
Today	Planned, overdue, active, available, unscheduled, and completed actions
Tree	Full hierarchy with progress, severity, health, notes, and direct actions
Graph	Responsive force-directed connections with animated motion, dragging, Area/status/depth filters, zoom, and pan
Calendar	Month, Week, and Day planning with Anytime, timed, Due, and unscheduled work
Kanban	Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly execution boards
Lists	Movies, books, courses, certifications, articles, and custom lists
Review	Completed work, habits, overdue and at-risk work, and Area summaries

Habits and repeating work

A habit is a Task or Subtask with Repeating task enabled, so the hierarchy stays simple. Repeat choices include every day, Sunday–Thursday, selected weekdays, a flexible number of times per week, every week, and every month. Preferred-day chips run from Sunday through Saturday. A repeat can continue until manually stopped or until a selected date.

Each occurrence has its own completion status. Review shows completed versus expected habit occurrences.

Meetings and scheduling

Mark any Task or Subtask as a Meeting. It remains under its Project and can have a planned day, start time, end time, duration, notes, severity, and status.

Calendar Week is the default planning view and starts on Sunday. Work may be scheduled for Anytime or a specific time. Due dates remain visually separate from planned work. Unscheduled Tasks and Subtasks can be dragged to a day on desktop or tablet; on a phone, open the item and choose its planned day.

Lists

New installations include Movies, Technical Books, Books, Courses, Certifications, and Articles. You can create more lists.

A list item can remain a simple reference or be promoted to a Goal, Project, Task, or Subtask. Completion is synchronized in both directions. Finished items remain visible below unfinished items and are crossed out with their completion date.

Reorder entries with the grip handle: drag it on desktop or long-press and drag it on mobile and tablet. The item menu also provides Move up and Move down. Active and finished entries have independent manual ordering, and finished entries always remain below active entries.

Status, progress, and health

Leaf Tasks and Subtasks contribute 0% until completed, then 100%. Parent progress is the severity-weighted average of its active direct children. Cancelled work is excluded and hidden from Kanban.

An open item becomes At Risk when it is at least 20 percentage points behind its expected date progress, or when an open descendant is overdue. Areas remain neutral.

Mobile and tablet

The plugin is not desktop-only and is designed for Obsidian mobile and tablet:

• touch-sized primary controls;
• horizontally scrollable tabs and weekly boards;
• stacked Lists, Calendar, and Review layouts;
• responsive create/edit dialogs;
• touch pan and zoom in Graph;
• Day Calendar for narrow screens.

For the simplest phone workflow, use Today, Day Calendar, Lists, and Review. Use tablet or desktop for the full weekly board and large graph.

Markdown storage

Goal Tree items are normal Markdown notes inside the configured Goal Tree folder. Each note receives a permanent goal-id, readable parent link, type, status, severity, dates, recurrence fields, and calculated roll-up properties. Click an item title to open and edit its note body.

Deleting an item from Goal Tree moves its note and descendants to Obsidian trash. Completed work remains visible until you archive it. Personal Lists are stored in the plugin's local Obsidian data.

Installation

1. Extract the install ZIP.
2. Copy the extracted goal-tree folder into <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/.
3. Open Settings → Community plugins.
4. Reload installed plugins if needed, then enable Goal Tree.
5. Run Goal Tree: Open overview from the Command Palette or use its ribbon icon.

When upgrading, replace main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css, then reload Obsidian. Your Markdown notes and Lists remain intact.

Commands

• Goal Tree: Open overview
• Goal Tree: Open Today
• Goal Tree: Open goal hierarchy
• Goal Tree: Open graph
• Goal Tree: Open calendar
• Goal Tree: Open kanban
• Goal Tree: Open lists
• Goal Tree: Open Review
• Goal Tree: Create starter goal tree
• Goal Tree: Organize files into goal hierarchy
• Goal Tree: Repair goal properties and identities

Settings

• Goal Tree folder
• Default severity
• Calculated-property synchronization
• Today availability behavior
• First day of week
• Kanban period, item level, and visible card details

Development

Requires Node.js 18 or newer.

npm install
npm run check

Privacy

Goal Tree works locally inside your Obsidian vault. It makes no network requests and uses no analytics service.

License

MIT