Vault Insights

Generate actionable insights from your Obsidian vault - daily/weekly summaries, aggregated todo lists, topic analysis, and content visualizations.

No external services. No API keys. Fully offline.

Features

Daily & Weekly Summaries

Automatically generate markdown notes summarizing your vault activity:

• Notes created and modified in the period
• Scheduled generation at a configurable time
• Choose calendar weeks (Sun–Sat) or rolling lookback windows
• Word count tracking with "Most Active Note" highlight
• Task completion statistics
• Topic distribution with Mermaid charts
• Direct links to touched notes
• Navigation links between daily and weekly summaries
• Optional AI-powered summaries via local Ollama
• Auto-opens generated notes in the editor

Aggregated Todo List

Create a unified task list from your entire vault or specific folders:

• Extract all - [ ] and - [x] tasks
• Group by source file, due date, or tag
• Smart sorting by due date (earliest first)
• Overdue highlighting with warning callouts
• Track completion progress with visualization
• Support for due date syntax (📅 2024-01-26 or due:: 2024-01-26)
• Toggle completed tasks visibility

Topic Frequency Analysis

Understand what you write about most:

• Tag frequency across your vault
• Heading patterns (H1 and H2)
• Internal link analysis
• Visual charts showing topic distribution
• Optional AI-powered topic extraction via Ollama

Content Visualization

Charts embedded directly in your generated notes:

• Pie/doughnut charts: Content distribution by topic or folder
• Bar charts: Topic frequency, daily activity
• Timelines: Note creation over time
• Tables: Ranked topic listings

Two rendering engines available:

• Mermaid (default) — Native Obsidian support, zero dependencies, works on mobile
• Chart.js — Interactive canvas-based charts with hover tooltips, theme-aware colors

Installation

From Community Plugins (Recommended)

1. Open Obsidian Settings
2. Go to Community Plugins → Browse
3. Search for "Vault Insights"
4. Click Install, then Enable

Manual Installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Create a folder vault-insights in your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory
3. Copy the downloaded files into this folder
4. Restart Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins

Commands

Command	Description
Generate daily summary	Create a summary note for today's vault activity
Generate weekly summary	Create a summary note for the current week
Generate todo list	Aggregate all tasks from configured folders
Generate pending todo list	Create a clean list of uncompleted tasks
Analyze vault topics	Generate topic frequency analysis
Refresh all insights	Regenerate all insight notes

Access these commands via the Command Palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P).

Settings

Summary Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Summary Folder	Where generated notes are saved	Insights
Daily Summary	Enable daily summary generation	On
Weekly Summary	Enable weekly summary generation	On
Summary Time	Scheduled generation time	09:00
Use Calendar Weeks	Weekly summaries use Sunday–Saturday	On

Todo Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Source Folders	Folders to scan for tasks (empty = all)	[]
Exclude Folders	Folders to skip when scanning	templates, archive
Group By	How to organize tasks	file
Include Completed	Show completed tasks in the list	Off

Topic Analysis Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Topic Sources	What to analyze (tags, headings, links)	tags, headings
Max Topics	Maximum topics to display	20

Visualization Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Chart Type	Rendering engine for charts	mermaid
Max Chart Items	Maximum items in charts	10

Both Mermaid and Chart.js are fully supported.

Section Visibility

Customize which sections appear in generated summaries:

Setting	Description	Default
Show AI Summary	Include AI-generated summary section	On
Show Charts	Include charts and visualizations	On
Show File List	Include list of notes touched	On
Show Topic Table	Include topic rankings table	On

Ollama Integration (Optional)

Setting	Description	Default
Enable Ollama	Use local LLM for smart extraction	Off
Ollama URL	Local Ollama server address	http://localhost:11434
Ollama Model	Model to use for extraction	llama3

Generated Note Structure

All generated notes include:

• YAML frontmatter with metadata (generator, date range, tags)
• AI Summary section (when Ollama is enabled)
• Overview section with key statistics
• Mermaid visualizations for data
• Detailed listings with wikilinks to source notes

Example output structure:

Insights/
├── Daily/
│   └── Daily Summary - 2024-01-26.md
├── Weekly/
│   └── Weekly Summary - 2024-01-21 to 2024-01-27.md
├── Todos/
│   └── Todo List - 2024-01-26.md
└── Vault Insights - 2024-01-26.md

Example frontmatter:

---
title: "Daily Summary - 2024-01-26"
generated: 2024-01-26T10:00:00.000Z
generator: daily-summary
period: daily
startDate: 2024-01-26
endDate: 2024-01-26
tags: [vault-insights, daily-summary]
---

AI Features (Optional)

Vault Insights supports optional AI-powered features via Ollama, a local LLM runner:

• AI Summaries: Natural language summaries of your daily/weekly activity
• AI Topics: Identifies themes from your note content

Setup

1. Install Ollama
2. Pull a model: ollama pull llama3
3. Start Ollama: ollama serve
4. Enable in plugin settings and test the connection

Privacy and network disclosure

When Ollama is enabled, the plugin sends note content to your locally running Ollama instance over HTTP (localhost:11434 by default). No data is sent to any external server.

• All AI processing happens locally on your machine
• Only the configured localhost URL is contacted
• Non-localhost URLs trigger a console warning
• Ollama runs entirely offline once models are downloaded
• AI features gracefully degrade if Ollama is unavailable

Note: Ollama features are desktop-only. Mobile users get all other features.

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Language	TypeScript (strict mode)
Runtime	Obsidian (Electron + Mobile)
Build	esbuild
Visualizations	Mermaid (native) + Chart.js (interactive)
AI	Ollama (optional, local-only)

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 16+
• npm

Setup

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/nexio-t/obsidian-plugin.git
cd vault-insights

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build for development (with watch mode)
npm run dev

# Build for production
npm run build

# Type checking
npm run typecheck

# Linting
npm run lint

# Run tests
npm test

# Run tests with coverage
npm run test:coverage

Project Structure

vault-insights/
├── main.ts                        # Plugin entry point
├── manifest.json                  # Obsidian plugin manifest
├── package.json                   # Dependencies and scripts
├── tsconfig.json                  # TypeScript configuration
├── esbuild.config.mjs             # Build configuration
├── jest.config.js                 # Jest test configuration
├── styles.css                     # Plugin styles
├── tests/                         # Test suite
│   ├── __mocks__/                 # Obsidian API mocks
│   ├── integrations/              # Ollama client tests
│   └── visualizations/            # Mermaid and Chart.js tests
└── src/
    ├── types.ts                   # Shared interfaces and types
    ├── settings.ts                # Settings tab UI
    │
    ├── extractors/
    │   └── tasks.ts               # Task/checkbox extraction
    │
    ├── generators/
    │   ├── base.ts                # Abstract base generator class
    │   ├── daily-summary.ts       # Daily summary generation
    │   ├── weekly-summary.ts      # Weekly summary generation
    │   ├── todo-list.ts           # Aggregated task list
    │   ├── pending-todo-list.ts   # Pending-only task list
    │   └── insights.ts            # Topic analysis and insights
    │
    ├── visualizations/
    │   ├── mermaid.ts             # Mermaid chart generation
    │   ├── chartjs.ts             # Chart.js config generation
    │   ├── chartjs-renderer.ts    # Chart.js code block processor
    │   └── templates.ts           # Chart template wrappers
    │
    └── integrations/
        └── ollama.ts              # Ollama AI client

Testing in Obsidian

1. Build the plugin: npm run build
2. Copy main.js and manifest.json to your test vault's .obsidian/plugins/vault-insights/
3. Reload Obsidian (Cmd/Ctrl + R)
4. Enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins

Compatibility

Platform	Support
Windows	Full
macOS	Full
Linux	Full
iOS	Core features (no Ollama)
Android	Core features (no Ollama)

Minimum Obsidian version: 1.0.0

FAQ

Does this work on mobile?

Yes! All core features work on mobile. The optional Ollama integration is desktop-only and gracefully falls back on mobile.

Will this slow down my vault?

No. Vault Insights uses Obsidian's built-in MetadataCache, which means files aren't re-read from disk. Generation is efficient even with large vaults (1000+ notes).

Can I customize the output?

Generated notes are standard markdown files. You can edit them after generation.

Where are insights saved?

By default, insights are saved to an Insights folder in your vault root. You can change this in settings.

How do I exclude certain folders?

Add folder names to the "Exclude Folders" setting (comma-separated). Tasks and topics from these folders won't appear in generated notes.

What happens if Ollama is unavailable?

AI features gracefully degrade - summaries and insights are generated without the AI sections. You'll never see an error, just standard extraction-based output.

Privacy

• 100% Local: All processing happens on your device
• No telemetry: No data is collected or sent anywhere
• No API keys: Core features require no external accounts
• Ollama is local: Even AI features use a locally-running model

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Support

• Report an issue
• Feature requests

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

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Made for the Obsidian community.