Knowledge Atlas is a visual navigation and review plugin for Obsidian. It reads Markdown files through Obsidian's native API and presents the vault as an animated galaxy, a structured tree, and a set of activity and knowledge-health panels. It does not require Dataview, generated index notes, or a network service.

Availability: Knowledge Atlas is available from Obsidian's Community Plugins directory. Manual installation from GitHub Releases is also supported.

Screenshots

Galaxy overview

Tree view

The screenshots use anonymized labels. Knowledge Atlas never changes note names to render the atlas.

Highlights

Area	What it provides
Galaxy navigation	The vault is a star, top-level folders are planets, and second-level folders are moons. Node size reflects the amount of knowledge below it.
Celestial motion	Mercury-to-Neptune period references with perceptual time compression, smooth revolution and self-rotation, adjustable speed, hover-to-pause inspection, atmospheric shading, rings, and a soft solar corona.
Root-note comet	One root-level Markdown note becomes a comet. The selection is stable during the day and can rotate on another day; no special filename is required.
Focused satellites	The overview shows at most three representative second-level folders per planet on one readable moon track; drill down to see the rest.
Tree and drill-down views	Switch to a readable hierarchy, enter folders, inspect note nodes, and follow real links resolved by Obsidian.
Search and recency	Search the full vault, open notes directly, and browse recently updated notes.
Activity insights	A conventional 53-week heatmap, 12-month growth trajectory, weekday rhythm, local clock, and activity-aware calendar.
Knowledge health	Find orphan notes, unresolved links, and notes that have not been updated for a configurable period.
Review workflow	Open every note created on a heatmap day and receive a stable daily review of three older notes.
Flexible workspace	Drag and resize the canvas and panels, save the layout, reset it, zoom, pan, and fit the graph to the viewport.
Internationalization	Chinese and English interfaces, selected from the plugin settings.

How the galaxy is organized

Vault                         → star
├── Top-level folder          → planet
│   ├── Second-level folder   → moon
│   └── Notes and subfolders  → influence celestial size
└── Root-level Markdown note  → daily stable comet selection

The overview intentionally stops at the second folder level so a large vault remains readable. Enter a folder or use search to reach deeper folders and individual notes.

Installation

Install the packaged version

1. Download knowledge-atlas-1.11.4.zip.

2. Extract it. The archive contains a folder named knowledge-atlas.

3. Copy that folder into your vault:

   <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/knowledge-atlas/
   

4. In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins.

5. Select Reload installed plugins if Knowledge Atlas is not shown, then enable Knowledge Atlas.

Build from source

Clone the repository, then build the release file:

npm install
npm run build

Create <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/knowledge-atlas/ and copy these generated/runtime files into it:

main.js
manifest.json
styles.css

versions.json, README.md, and LICENSE are useful for distribution but are not required at runtime.

Open and use the atlas

• Select the Knowledge Atlas ribbon icon.
• Or run Knowledge Atlas: Open atlas from the command palette.
• Select a planet or moon to drill into a folder.
• Select a note node, search result, heatmap day, health result, or review card to open the corresponding note.

Canvas controls

Control	Action
Mouse wheel	Zoom in or out
Drag empty canvas	Pan the graph
− / +	Adjust zoom
Fit	Fit the current graph to the canvas
Play / pause	Start or stop celestial motion
Speed slider	Set motion from 0.25× to 3×
Hover a celestial body	Pause the system for inspection
Galaxy / Tree	Switch between orbital and hierarchical layouts
Arrange layout	Move and resize the canvas and dashboard panels

Settings

• Excluded folders — comma-separated vault paths or prefixes that should not appear in the atlas.
• Maximum folders — maximum folder nodes rendered in one view.
• Maximum notes — maximum note nodes rendered in one view.
• Recent notes — number of recently modified notes shown in the panel.
• Open notes in a new tab — keep the atlas open when navigating to a note.
• Interface language — follow the system language or use Chinese/English.
• Open Atlas on startup — open Knowledge Atlas when the Obsidian workspace loads.
• Stale note threshold — number of inactive days before a note is considered stale.

Custom panel positions, sizes, stacking order, and motion speed are saved in the plugin settings. Compact screens automatically fall back to a responsive layout.

Dates and activity data

Knowledge Atlas prefers a note's created, created_at, or date-created frontmatter value. When those properties are unavailable, it falls back to the file creation time reported by Obsidian. Frontmatter is therefore optional.

Heatmaps and trajectories follow the conventional chronological direction: older activity is on the left and newer activity is on the right.

Performance and accessibility

• Celestial positions stay on a 60 FPS requestAnimationFrame path while mutable orbit data is reused instead of rebuilt every frame.
• Static stars and spokes are batched into compact SVG paths, and redundant DOM writes are skipped.
• Hidden atlas views suspend animation and defer refresh work until they become visible again.
• Blur, shadows, micro-textures, and secondary satellite links are reduced while moving, then restored immediately when paused or hovered.
• Tree mode pauses orbital animation automatically.
• The operating system's reduced-motion preference disables automatic animation.
• The plugin supports desktop and mobile according to the manifest, while the full free-layout experience is most comfortable on larger screens.

Privacy

Knowledge Atlas runs locally inside Obsidian. It does not upload vault content, call external APIs, create generated index notes, or require a third-party database. Search, links, activity, and health checks are derived from Obsidian's local vault and metadata cache.

Development and releases

The readable source is in src/main.js. The production bundle is generated with esbuild and is attached to GitHub Releases rather than tracked in the repository.

Before publishing a version to GitHub Releases or submitting it to the Obsidian Community Plugins directory:

1. Update version in manifest.json.
2. Add the version mapping to versions.json.
3. Run npm run lint and npm run build.
4. Verify the generated bundle with node --check main.js.
5. Test the plugin in Obsidian and check developer errors.
6. Create a GitHub release whose tag exactly matches the manifest version.
7. Attach main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css to the release.

Contributing

Issues and focused pull requests are welcome. When reporting a visual or performance issue, include the Obsidian version, operating system, approximate vault size, layout mode, and a screenshot with private note names removed.

License

MIT © 2026 Eason38467