nameForge for Obsidian

Feed it a list of names you love, let it work out the Markov Magic, and generate fresh names right inside Obsidian in that very same style. (Offline, no AI, no internet connection, so you'll not end up getting distracted and start hoovering the dogs...)

Feed nameForge a list of source names (characters, places, clans—anything), and it learns the letter patterns of that list and generates new names in the same style. Names for an Anglo-Saxon village produce more Anglo-Saxon-sounding villages; names from your own invented culture produce more of that. Everything runs locally using its statistical Markov Magic Model built fresh from your list each time: your names never leave your vault.

Built by a worldbuilder, for worldbuilders.

Features

• Four pack types for different naming jobs:
  • Breakdown — learns letter patterns from your list and invents new names in that style. The core generator.
  • List — picks names verbatim from your list at random, no repeats. For when you've already written the names and just want a dice roll.
  • Compound — builds names from 2 or 3 independent parts, either fused into one word (Wulf + stan → Wulfstan) or kept separate (Lofty + Tiger → Lofty Tiger). Each part can use breakdown generation or verbatim picks.
  • Place — specialised for settlement names. Recognises toponymic endings (-ford, -wich, -stowe, -ton and dozens more, plus any invented endings that recur in your list), keeps them intact, and generates only the first element — so results read like real places, not letter soup. Learns multi-word patterns too ("Great …", "…-on-…") and reproduces them in proportion.
• Reproducible batches. Every generation shows its seed. Copy it, lock it, and the same seed with the same pack and settings regenerates the identical batch; today or next year.
• Generation history. The last 50 generations (timestamp, seed, pack) are logged to a plain markdown config file in your vault, so a batch you liked last week can be recovered.
• Direct insertion. Click names to select them, then insert into the active note as plain text, a bullet list, or a checklist — cursor-aware, so it never splits your text mid-line.
• Tuning sliders. Faithfulness controls how closely output hugs the source style; Strictness controls how fussy the generator is about accepting a candidate.
• Forgiving input. Paste names one per line, comma-separated, as bullets, wikilinks, or a mix — NameWright tidies them up.
• Plain markdown storage. Packs and configuration are ordinary .md files with frontmatter. They sync with your vault, diff cleanly in git, and can be edited by hand.

Installation

1. Clone or copy this repository to your development folder
2. Run npm install to install dependencies
3. Run npm run build to build the plugin (creates main.js)
4. Copy the following files to your Obsidian vault's .obsidian/plugins/nameforge/ folder:
   • main.js
   • manifest.json
   • styles.css
5. Enable the plugin in Obsidian Settings → Community plugins

Development

npm install
npm run dev    # Watch mode for development
npm run build  # Production build

On every version bump, update versions.json (plugin version → minAppVersion) to match manifest.json — it must stay in step for community plugin releases.

Releasing

Releases are built and published by .github/workflows/release.yml, not uploaded by hand. Pushing a tag (e.g. 1.0.1, matching the version in manifest.json) triggers the workflow, which builds main.js from source and publishes a GitHub release containing main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css, along with a build provenance attestation for each asset so users can verify they were built from this repository.

git tag 1.0.1
git push origin 1.0.1

License

MIT