Promptbox

A local-first library of AI prompts for Obsidian. Each prompt is a plain Markdown note with YAML frontmatter, so the library stays readable, searchable, and portable even without the plugin. Nothing leaves the vault: no network calls, no accounts, no telemetry. Works on desktop and mobile.

Features

Library view

• Full-tab library with fuzzy search: a subsequence matcher scores and ranks results by title, use case, and body, independent of word order, and highlights the matched characters in the title.
• Filters for type, category, tags, quality, visibility, and date, plus sorting by title, date, usage recency, relevance, or favorites-first.
• Each card carries icon-button actions (copy with variables, copy raw, edit metadata, open as note, delete, toggle favorite) and, as of v1.2.0, a right-click (long-press on mobile) context menu with the same actions as text labels, a second way to reach them without cluttering the card further.
• A lint badge appears on any card with a warning; click it to open the full findings for that prompt.

Creating and editing

• Create and edit prompts from a modal. The frontmatter holds the metadata; the body lives in the note itself, so it opens in the normal Obsidian editor.
• Tag and category fields suggest values already used in the library, ranked by a local keyword-frequency scorer. The plugin never applies suggestions automatically, it only offers them as chips.
• The edit modal shows up to 5 related prompts, ranked by shared tags, category, and title or use-case tokens, so duplicate or near-duplicate prompts are easy to spot.
• An Info field holds free-form usage notes: what each placeholder expects, when to reach for the prompt, gotchas. Prompts that have one get an info button on their card, which opens the notes read-only.

Copying and reuse

• Copy with variables: prompts can declare {{name}} placeholders, filled through a form before copying. Placeholders support a default value ({{name|default}}), a hint ({{name|default|hint}}), and a choice dropdown ({{tone|formal,casual|hint}}).
• Context variables resolve automatically at copy time: {{@selection}} inserts the current editor selection, {{@title}} and {{@date}} pull from the active note, and {{@clipboard}} reads the system clipboard.
• A placeholder insertion palette (the "Insert placeholder" command, inline {{ autocomplete while typing, and a button in the create/edit modal) lists context variables, names already used elsewhere in the library, and the raw syntax templates, so nothing needs to be memorized.
• Vault transclusion: a [[wikilink]] inside a prompt body resolves to the linked note's content at copy time, one level deep. The resolver leaves heading (#) and block (^) references unresolved by design.
• The prompt's Info notes appear above the fields in the variable fill-in form, so placeholder guidance is there at the moment it is needed — from the library, the quick picker, and the launcher URI alike.
• Variable profiles: save a named set of placeholder values from the fill-in form and reapply it later from a dropdown, useful for prompts that are copied often with the same inputs.

Quick access outside the library

• A quick picker (fuzzy suggest modal) for reuse without opening the full library tab. Hold Ctrl or Cmd while selecting to copy the raw body instead of resolving variables.
• An obsidian://promptbox launcher URI, callable from Raycast, Alfred, Shortcuts, or any other URI-aware tool. Pass path or title to jump straight to a prompt, raw=true to skip the variable form, or no parameters at all to open the picker.

Keeping the library healthy

• A linter flags common problems on demand: malformed or conflicting placeholder declarations, empty bodies, missing use case or category, near-duplicate titles, and notes that lost their type value after a type-key rename. It only reports, it never rewrites a note.
• JSON export and import, with a per-conflict diff preview (old value versus new, field by field) before anything gets overwritten.
• Curated packs bundle a set of prompts with pack-level metadata for sharing a themed collection as a single file; a plain export stays byte-identical for everyone else.
• A read-only statistics modal reports library size, tag and category distribution, and orphaned references, computed on demand.
• The plugin tracks usage locally (last-used date, copy count) to power the "recently used" sort. This lives in the plugin's local data, never in the notes themselves.

Commands

Command	Does
Open library	Opens the library view
New prompt	Opens the create modal
Edit prompt metadata	Opens the edit modal for the active note, if it's a prompt
Insert placeholder	Opens the placeholder insertion palette at the cursor
Copy prompt	Copies the active note with variables resolved
Copy prompt (raw)	Copies the active note's body unresolved
Export prompts (JSON)	Exports the current filtered set
Import prompts (JSON)	Opens the import flow with diff preview
Lint library	Runs the linter over the whole library
Library statistics	Opens the statistics modal

None ship with a default hotkey; assign them under Settings, Hotkeys.

Settings

• Prompts folder: the vault folder that holds prompt notes (subfolders included). Changing it re-indexes immediately.
• Default type for new prompts: preselected in the create modal.
• Type frontmatter key: the frontmatter key used for a prompt's type, default type. Change it to avoid a clash with another taxonomy using the same key; existing notes keep their old key until edited.
• Type and category values: add, rename, reorder, or remove; these feed the modal dropdowns and the library filters. Removing a value in use never touches existing notes, only the dropdown list.
• Variable profiles: rename or delete profiles saved from the copy-with-variables form.

Usage

1. Open the library from the ribbon icon or the "Open library" command, and set the prompts folder in the plugin settings.
2. Create a prompt with "New prompt". The frontmatter holds the metadata, the note body is the prompt text.
3. Copy a prompt from a card action, the right-click menu, the quick picker, or the obsidian://promptbox URI. A form opens for any placeholders; the result goes to the clipboard.
4. While writing a prompt body, run "Insert placeholder" or type {{ to insert a variable or a syntax template without memorizing the format.

Installation

Once the plugin is in the community list: Settings, Community plugins, Browse, search for "Promptbox".

Before then, install it with BRAT by adding the repository istefox/promptbox.

Documentation

The full planning package (specification, ADRs, tiered plan) lives in docs/: MVP spec, community-library spec, implementation plan, Architecture Decision Records.

License

MIT