Yesterday Summarizer

An Obsidian plugin that summarizes your daily notes using a local LLM (Ollama) to generate actionable insights. Supports daily, weekly, and monthly summaries with intelligent blocker detection and pattern recognition.

Features

• Daily Summary: Extract completed tasks, blockers, energy/mood signals, and actionable focus items
• Weekly Summary: Synthesize patterns across 7 days with trajectory analysis
• Monthly Summary: Strategic overview with time investment analysis
• Day Comparison: Compare yesterday vs today for momentum tracking
• Auto-Summarize: Automatically generate summary when opening daily notes
• Wikilink Preservation: Maintains [[links]] to projects, people, and tools
• Privacy-First: Uses local Ollama - your notes never leave your machine
• Smart Caching: Skips unchanged content to save processing time

Requirements

• Ollama installed and running locally
• A model pulled (recommended: gemma3:12b)

# Install Ollama, then pull a model
ollama pull gemma3:12b

Recommended Models

Model	Quality	Speed	Best For
gemma3:12b	79/100	63s	Best balance (default)
qwen2.5-coder:7b	77/100	38s	Fastest quality option
deepseek-r1:latest	73/100	94s	Highest raw quality

Installation

From Community Plugins (Recommended)

1. Open Obsidian Settings → Community Plugins
2. Search for "Yesterday Summarizer"
3. Install and enable

Manual Installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json from the latest release
2. Create folder: <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/yesterday-summarizer/
3. Copy files into the folder
4. Enable plugin in Obsidian settings

Usage

Commands

Open command palette (Cmd/Ctrl + P) and search for:

Command	Description
Summarize yesterday	Generate summary of previous day's note
Summarize this week	Synthesize patterns across 7 days
Summarize this month	Strategic monthly overview
Compare yesterday vs today	Track momentum between days

Auto-Summarization

When enabled, opening a daily note will automatically:

1. Check if the target section exists (default: ## Yesterday's Highlights)
2. If the section is empty, generate and insert yesterday's summary
3. Skip if content hasn't changed since last summarization

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Ollama endpoint	Ollama API URL	http://localhost:11434
Ollama model	Model to use for summarization	gemma3:12b
Daily notes folder	Where your daily notes are stored	10_daily
Output mode	Insert at cursor or copy to clipboard	cursor
Detail level	Concise / Standard / Detailed	standard
Auto-summarize	Auto-summarize on file open	true
Target section	Section header for auto-summary	## Yesterday's Highlights
Week starts on	Monday or Sunday	monday

Daily Note Format

The plugin supports two filename formats:

• YYYY-MM-DD.md (e.g., 2026-01-15.md)
• YYYY-MM-DD – Journal.md (e.g., 2026-01-15 – Journal.md)

Output Format

Daily Summary

**Completed**:
- Submitted project proposal (referral)
- Set up local dev environment

**Incomplete**:
- Resume updates (3 days stalled)
- Team PR review

**Blockers**:
- Resume: unclear what to highlight (clarity blocker)

**Energy & Mood**:
- Drained after morning meetings, energy recovered after lunch

**Insights**:
- Repeated avoidance on resume = needs clearer scope first

**Today's Focus**:
1. Define resume highlights (5 min brainstorm)
2. Review team PR
3. Start resume draft

**Quick Wins**:
- Outline 3 resume bullet points

**Mentioned**:
[[ProjectX]], [[Sarah]], [[Ollama]]

Weekly Summary

**Key Accomplishments**:
- Shipped [[ProjectX]] MVP
- Completed 3 job applications

**Open Threads**:
- [[BlogRedesign]] — 60% done, blocked on images

**Blockers & Friction**:
- Tax prep: avoidance pattern (mentioned 4x, 0 action)

**Energy Arc**:
- Mon-Tue high, Wed crashed, Thu-Fri recovering

**Themes & Patterns**:
- TIME: 60% on [[ProjectX]], 10% on [[JobSearch]]
- GAPS: Tax prep mentioned daily but never touched

**Trajectory**:
- Productivity: ↑
- Focus: scattered
- Energy: depleting

**Next Week's Intention**:
Close one thread completely before starting anything new.

Blocker Detection

The plugin intelligently detects hidden blockers:

Pattern	Blocker Type
Task mentioned multiple days without progress	Avoidance blocker
"not sure", "unclear", "don't know"	Clarity blocker
"waiting on", "need X first"	Dependency blocker
Energy crashes preventing work	Energy blocker

Troubleshooting

"Ollama error: fetch failed"

• Ensure Ollama is running: ollama serve
• Check endpoint in settings matches your Ollama URL

"Model not found"

• Pull the model: ollama pull gemma3:12b
• Or change model in plugin settings

"Note not found for YYYY-MM-DD"

• Verify your daily notes folder setting matches your vault structure
• Check that yesterday's note exists

Summary quality issues

• Try deepseek-r1:latest for higher quality (slower)
• Use "Detailed" mode in settings for more comprehensive output
• Ensure your daily notes have structured content (tasks, notes sections)

Check logs

• Open Obsidian Developer Console (Cmd+Option+I) for error messages

Development

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/xiaolong-y/obsidian-yesterday-summarizer.git
cd obsidian-yesterday-summarizer

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build
npm run build

# Run benchmark
npx ts-node benchmark.ts

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

Support

• Report issues
• Source code