Trello Kanban Sync

Mirrors Trello boards into native Obsidian Kanban-plugin boards (requires the Kanban plugin to actually render them). Defaults to one-way sync: Trello is the source of truth. Edits you make to a synced note inside Obsidian are overwritten on the next sync, unless you turn on two-way sync (see below).

Setup

1. Go to https://trello.com/power-ups/admin/ and create your own app.
2. Copy the API key and paste it into the "Trello API key" field, then click "Open authorization page".
3. Grant access, then copy the token shown on that page.
4. Paste the token into the "Trello API token" field.
5. Click "Fetch my boards", then toggle on the boards you want synced.
6. Each enabled board is written to Trello/<Board Name>.md (configurable) on the configured interval (default every 5 seconds), or immediately via the "Sync now" command.

Each card can also render its due-complete state (checkbox is ticked once a card's due date is marked complete on Trello), its labels, and a link back to the Trello card, all on by default. Three more fields are available as opt-in toggles in settings:

• Members — on by default, shown as @username tags on the card line.
• Description and Checklists — off by default. Both render as indented text/checkboxes under the card, refreshed every sync. These lines are tagged internally as Trello-owned, so by themselves they never opt a card out of two-way sync's name/lane push (see below) and never overwrite anything you've typed by hand under the same card, that still works and is preserved exactly as before.

Two-way sync (experimental, off by default)

Turn on "Two-way sync" in settings to push edits made directly in Obsidian's Kanban view back to Trello. Only four things ever sync Obsidian → Trello: a card's name, which lane it's in, whether it exists (creating or archiving), and — only if "Render checklists" is also on — a checklist item's checked state. Everything else (due dates, labels, card/checklist order, lane order, a checklist item's own text) always stays one-way, reflecting Trello's current values.

How it works, briefly: every card and lane gets a hidden %%tid:...%% / %%lid:...%% marker (invisible in the Kanban board view) so the plugin can recognize "this is still card X" across edits. Each sync cycle 3-way-merges the note's current content against a saved snapshot of Trello's last-known state, so a partner's concurrent edit on Trello.com always wins over a stale local edit rather than silently clobbering it. Cards/lists are only ever archived (never hard-deleted) and only when it's unambiguous that they were actually removed locally, anything uncertain is left alone and logged rather than guessed at. On top of that, a card/list has to come up missing from the local file on two consecutive sync cycles before it's archived, a one-off misread (e.g. something else briefly touching the file, like another Obsidian Sync device or a git pull) doesn't get to archive anything by itself, it's just noted and re-checked next cycle. A card with extra indented lines under it that you typed by hand (Kanban supports multi-line card bodies) is automatically excluded from two-way sync's name/lane push so your notes are never mistaken for something to push to Trello, the card itself still exists and stays untouched, it's only the push that's skipped. The indented lines the plugin renders itself (a Trello description/checklist) don't count towards this, only your own hand-typed lines do.

Turning two-way sync back off at any time is safe, the board just reverts to today's plain one-way behavior, no cleanup needed.

Development

npm install
npm run dev     # esbuild watch, rebuilds main.js on save
npm run build    # type-check + production bundle

Use the "Sync now" command to test a sync pass immediately instead of waiting on the interval.

Notes

• All Trello calls go through Obsidian's requestUrl (not fetch), so this works on mobile too.
• The plugin preserves everything already in a board note's %% kanban:settings %% block (lane collapse state, show-checkboxes, etc.), it only ever touches list-collapse to keep it aligned with the current lane order.
• Your Trello API key/token live in this plugin's data.json. If your vault is under git, make sure that file is gitignored.