Reading Desk

An Obsidian desktop plugin for reading PDFs with highlights and notes.

Status

This is the first version. It is a PDF reader with annotations and comments. It can:

• Open PDFs from your vault in a continuous-scroll reader.
• Highlight passages in colors you choose.
• Keep a book note for each PDF, where you write comments about passages.
• Save highlights and notes in your vault.

Read the PDF reader guide for details.

Vault and clipboard access

Reading Desk lists vault PDFs for the document picker and Markdown note paths for template suggestions. When retiring an older annotation export, it reads Markdown notes to check for links before moving that export to the trash. It reads PDFs and templates, saves highlight records, and updates linked book notes inside the vault. These operations stay local; the current reader makes no network requests or telemetry calls.

The Copy action writes the selected passage or highlight text to the system clipboard. Reading Desk does not read the clipboard.

Roadmap

• EPUB support. Pending.
• An AI reading assistant that answers questions about your books. Pending. You can use it with an API key or an existing subscription.

Development

Requirements are Node.js 22 or newer, pnpm, and Obsidian desktop.

pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm build
pnpm test

The development guide covers the development vault, watch mode, headless checks, and architecture.

License

Reading Desk is licensed under the MIT license.

The plugin bundles PDF.js under Apache 2.0, its OpenJPEG, JBIG2, and qcms image and color decoders under their BSD, Apache 2.0, and MIT licenses, and Svelte under MIT. Their license texts and notices are also included in the generated main.js, so they travel with the installed plugin.

Documentation

• Product direction describes the intended reading workflow.
• PDF reader guide covers features, the storage format, and runtime checks.
• Reading workflow plan records planned decisions and acceptance targets. It is not yet an approved implementation plan.
• Development guide covers building, testing, and runtime checks.
• Worktree workflow explains how agents do task work.