Pulpit

unlisted

by Arlington Castille

Save articles from any URL as clean Markdown notes in your vault. Local-first, no accounts.

Updated 25d agoMIT
View on GitHub

Pulpit

Your read-later, in your vault.

Send any article straight into your Obsidian vault, formatted and ready to read.

Pulpit fetches a URL, strips the ads and sidebars, and writes the article body to your vault as a properly formatted Markdown note with useful frontmatter. Local-first. No accounts, no servers, no API keys, no telemetry.

What a saved note looks like

---
title: How to write better
source: https://example.com/article
author: Jane Doe
date_saved: 2026-04-29
tags: [reading]
---

# How to write better

*By Jane Doe*

Source: <https://example.com/article>

---

The article body in clean Markdown...

That's the actual file Pulpit drops into your vault. Frontmatter ready for Dataview queries, body ready for highlighting and linking.

Features

  • One command, one note — Ctrl/Cmd+P, paste a URL, get a Markdown file
  • Clean extraction — ads, sidebars, and comment sections stripped, just the article
  • Useful frontmatter — title, source URL, author, and date saved, ready for Dataview
  • Default tags — comma-separated tags applied to every clipping (optional)
  • Configurable save folder — drop notes anywhere in your vault
  • Local-first — no accounts, no servers, no API keys, no telemetry

Install

Via BRAT (until Pulpit is in the community directory)

  1. Install the BRAT plugin from Obsidian's Community Plugins.
  2. In BRAT settings, click "Add Beta Plugin."
  3. Paste: https://github.com/ArlingtonCastille/pulpit
  4. Enable "Pulpit" in Community Plugins.

Manual install

  1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
  2. Create a folder at <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/pulpit/.
  3. Drop those three files into it.
  4. Enable "Pulpit" in Community Plugins.

Usage

Two commands available in the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+P):

  • Pulpit: Save URL from clipboard — copy a link from anywhere, run this command, the article is saved.
  • Pulpit: Save URL (paste in dialog) — opens a small input where you can paste any URL.

The saved note opens automatically in a new tab.

Settings

Pulpit ships with sensible defaults. These are for fine-tuning:

  • Save folder — where saved articles are written. Defaults to Pulpit/. The folder is created automatically.
  • Default tags — comma-separated tags added to every saved article. Leave blank for none.

Privacy

Pulpit runs entirely on your machine. The plugin fetches the URL you give it directly from your machine, processes the HTML locally, and writes the resulting note to your vault. No analytics, no servers, nothing leaves your device except the request to the page you're saving.

Known limitations

Images. Pulpit references images by their original URLs rather than downloading them into your vault. Most images render correctly in Obsidian, but some sites use hotlink protection, signed CDN URLs that expire, or JavaScript-based lazy loading. On those sites, larger images may show as broken even though the article text saves perfectly. Local image archival is on the v1.1 roadmap.

JavaScript-rendered content. Pulpit fetches raw HTML and does not run JavaScript. Articles on heavily JS-driven sites (single-page apps, dynamic feeds) may not extract.

Paywalls. If you can't read the article in a normal browser without logging in, Pulpit can't either.

Roadmap

  • Local image downloading and embedding
  • Custom filename templates (date prefixes, slug formats, etc.)
  • Bulk URL import from a list of links in a note
  • Highlight extraction from saved articles
  • Reader mode preview before saving

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Support

If Pulpit earns its keep, here's how to keep it going:

For plugin developers

Search results and similarity scores are powered by semantic analysis of your plugin's README. If your plugin isn't appearing for searches you'd expect, try updating your README to clearly describe your plugin's purpose, features, and use cases.