Poetry Notebook

An Obsidian plugin for writing and revising English poetry: syllable and meter analysis, rhyme search, synonyms and antonyms, definitions, thematic vocabulary, and a quick-reference guide — all in a tabbed sidebar panel.

Sibling project to the French plugin "Carnet du Poète," built independently for English rather than as a translation or extension of it.

Features

Syllables

Paste a poem and get, per line: a syllable count, meter (iambic / trochaic / anapestic / dactylic, named "pentameter," "tetrameter," etc.), and a rhyme scheme with colored badges. Analysis updates live as you type.

Syllable and stress data comes primarily from CMUdict (see below), with:

• an approximate heuristic fallback for words missing from CMUdict,
• an optional Datamuse online fallback for syllable counts only (off by default, toggled in Settings),
• a small built-in override list for common words CMUdict lists with a more formal syllable count than natural speech uses (e.g. "our," "fire"),
• automatic handling of the archaic -'d elision (e.g. "plann'd" → "planned").

Hover any line to see a per-word breakdown, including which source (CMUdict / override / heuristic / Datamuse) each word's syllable count came from.

Rhymes

Search CMUdict for perfect rhymes (matching stressed vowel and everything after it) and near/slant rhymes (consonance or assonance), grouped by syllable count. Near rhymes are always shown in a separate section unless "Strict rhyme mode" is on in Settings. Filter by starting letter or syllable count. An optional Datamuse online lookup (off by default) adds any extra matches; a link opens the word's RhymeZone page in your browser for RhymeZone's own advanced filters.

Synonyms & Antonyms

Look up a word against your personal dictionary, with an optional Datamuse online lookup (off by default) shown as clickable chips — click one to save it. You can also add entries by hand. Saved entries can be removed with the × button.

Definitions

On-demand lookup (nothing is fetched until you search) against English Wiktionary: etymology and definitions grouped by part of speech. A "View on Wiktionary ↗" link is always shown alongside the parsed result.

Inspiration

Type a common word (forest, sea, night, love, time, fire, weather, silence…) to get rarer, more literary vocabulary on the same theme, each with a short gloss. Ten built-in themes are included. An optional Datamuse "means like" online lookup (off by default) adds loosely related words.

Random

One button, one rare/literary word drawn from the same vocabulary pool used by Inspiration, with a gloss and quick links to look it up in Definitions or search it in Rhymes.

Guide

A static reference: meter and foot names, perfect vs. slant rhyme, classic poem forms (Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets, blank verse, villanelle, limerick), and a short note on poetic elision.

Installation

1. Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into a new folder at <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/poets-notebook/.
2. In Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins, and enable "Poet's Notebook."
3. Open it from the ribbon icon (feather) or the command palette ("Open Poet's Notebook").

Setting up CMUdict

The plugin works without CMUdict, using an approximate heuristic instead, but CMUdict gives much more accurate syllable counts, stress, meter, and rhyme detection.

1. Download cmudict.dict from the official repository: https://github.com/cmusphinx/cmudict
2. Place it in your vault at any of the following (checked in this order):
   • <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/poets-notebook/cmudict.dict
   • <vault>/.obsidian/cmudict.dict
   • <vault>/cmudict.dict (vault root)
   • anywhere else in the vault — the plugin falls back to a recursive filename search
3. In Settings → Poet's Notebook, click "Reload CMUdict" (or just reopen the panel).

CMUdict is public domain / unrestricted for research and commercial use.

Personal dictionary

The Synonyms tab writes to poets-notebook-dictionary.json automatically, but you can also create or edit this file by hand — for bulk-importing vocabulary, or adding entries no online lookup surfaces.

Where it's stored: same search order as cmudict.dict above. If no file is found anywhere in the vault, the first save creates one at the vault root. Override the path in Settings → Poet's Notebook → "Custom personal dictionary path," and re-scan at any time with "Reload personal dictionary."

Format:

{
  "synonyms": {
    "happy": ["joyful", "glad", "content", "cheerful"]
  },
  "antonyms": {
    "happy": ["sad", "miserable"]
  },
  "vocabularyThemes": [
    {
      "theme": "Mountains",
      "triggers": ["mountain", "mountains", "peak"],
      "words": [
        { "word": "crag", "note": "a steep, rugged rock or cliff" },
        { "word": "escarpment", "note": "a long, steep slope at the edge of a plateau" }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "rareWords": [
    { "word": "petrichor", "note": "the smell of rain on dry earth" }
  ]
}

All four top-level keys are optional and can be combined in the same file:

• synonyms / antonyms — each key is a word (matched case-insensitively), each value an array of related words. Read and written by the Synonyms tab.
• vocabularyThemes — extends the Inspiration tab. triggers are the everyday words that surface the theme (matched case-insensitively, with simple plural stripping). Also feeds the Random tab's word pool.
• rareWords — standalone words for the Random tab's pool without building a full theme around them (shown with theme "Personal dictionary").

A word cannot be saved as its own synonym or antonym through the UI.

Settings

• Allow Datamuse online lookups — enables the Datamuse fallback used for syllable counts on the Syllables tab when a word is missing from CMUdict.
• Strict rhyme mode — hides near/slant rhymes everywhere, showing only perfect rhymes.
• Custom CMUdict path / Reload CMUdict
• Custom personal dictionary path / Reload personal dictionary

Known limitations

• The Wiktionary definitions parser may come back empty or malformed for a word that clearly has a Wiktionary entry, use the "View on Wiktionary ↗" link in that case.
• Near-rhyme matching covers consonance and assonance only.
• Poetic elision handling currently covers the -'d → -ed pattern (e.g. "plann'd," "belov'd"); other archaic contractions (o'er, 'twas, e'er) are not yet normalized.
• No letter-level syllable splitting within a word — syllable counts are available, not syllable boundaries.
• Inspiration's built-in vocabulary covers ten themes; extend it via the personal dictionary's vocabularyThemes as needed.
• No personal-dictionary override for rhyme search yet — only CMUdict and Datamuse.

Changelog

• 1.0.2 — correction of readme. Added Antonyms (Datamuse rel_ant plus a personal-dictionary antonyms key), alongside Synonyms.
• 1.0.1 — small corrections
• 1.0.0 — Initial release: Syllables, Rhymes, Synonyms, Definitions, Guide, Inspiration, and Random tabs; CMUdict-based syllable/stress/meter engine; personal dictionary support.