MindSpark

Resurface your forgotten notes through weighted randomness — let old ideas find you again.

What it does

MindSpark adds a sidebar panel to Obsidian that randomly surfaces notes from your vault. It prioritizes notes you haven't seen in a while and suppresses recently shown ones, creating a serendipity engine for reconnecting with past ideas.

Features

• Weighted random surfacing — Notes you've never seen get 3× priority. Recently shown notes are suppressed for 72 hours. Older notes get a mild age boost.
• Sidebar panel — A glanceable panel showing 3–10 note cards with title and content preview.
• Click to open — Click any card to open the note in the editor.
• Refresh — Manually reshuffle with the refresh button, or enable auto-refresh on sidebar open.
• Folder exclusion — Tree-style folder picker in settings to exclude folders you don't want surfaced (e.g. templates, daily notes).
• First-use onboarding — A brief inline guide on first open, dismissible permanently.
• Smart previews — Handles YAML frontmatter, code blocks, and Mermaid diagrams gracefully.
• Theme compatible — Uses Obsidian CSS variables throughout, works with any theme in light or dark mode.
• Keyboard accessible — Tab to focus cards, Enter to open.

How it works

All .md files in your vault are candidates (minus excluded folders). Each note gets a weight based on:

Factor	Effect
Never shown before	Weight × 3
Shown recently	Suppressed (decays over 72 hours)
Note age	Mild boost for older notes

Notes are then selected via weighted random sampling (without replacement).

Settings

Setting	Description
Note count	Number of cards shown (3–10, default 5)
Excluded folders	Tree-style picker — toggle folders on/off
Auto-refresh	On: new notes each time sidebar opens. Off: keep previous notes until manual refresh

Installation

From Obsidian Community Plugins

1. Open Settings → Community Plugins → Browse
2. Search for MindSpark
3. Click Install, then Enable

Manual Installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Create folder .obsidian/plugins/obsidian-mindspark-plugin/ in your vault
3. Copy the three files into that folder
4. Enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins

Usage

1. Click the 🎲 dice icon in the left ribbon (or use command palette: MindSpark: 打开侧边栏)
2. Browse the surfaced notes
3. Click a card to open the note
4. Click 🔄 to refresh, or let it auto-refresh

Data & Privacy

• All data stays local — view history is stored in your vault's plugin data
• No external network requests
• No modifications to your notes

Development

npm install
npm run dev     # watch mode
npm run build   # production build

License

MIT