Root View

A custom, hierarchy-aware graph visualization plugin for Obsidian, built as an alternative to the native Graph View — designed for vaults with thousands of notes where the default graph becomes unreadable.

Why

Obsidian's built-in graph view treats every note the same size and offers no way to distinguish structurally important notes ("hubs") from leaf notes, nor to explore a note's ancestry/descendants in isolation. Root View was built to solve that for a personal knowledge base with a strict parent → child linking convention (general concepts link to specific instances).

Features

• Reachability-based node sizing — notes with more reachable connections render larger
• Automatic core & hub detection — globally important "root" notes (orange) and locally dense cluster hubs (yellow) are detected and labeled automatically, independent of manual tagging
• Cycle detection — strongly connected components (via Tarjan's algorithm) are found and rendered as dashed edges, distinguishing true hierarchy from cross-links
• Directional arrows — edges show parent → child direction at a glance
• Zoom-stable labels — core/hub labels stay legible at any zoom level; leaf labels fade in as you zoom closer
• Label collision avoidance — an iterative de-overlap pass keeps important labels readable even in dense regions
• Click to open — clicking any node opens the corresponding note
• Drag to reposition — manually rearrange nodes; the layout settles back around your changes
• Search — find any note by name, with a results list and auto-zoom to the match
• Ancestor/descendant filter — select a note to see only its strict ancestor chain and descendant chain (never cross-contaminated with siblings), rendered on its own for performance and clarity
• Performance-conscious by design — the graph loads a filtered subgraph on demand rather than the entire vault by default, keeping CPU load low on large vaults (1000+ notes)

Installation

This plugin isn't yet on the Community Plugin Store. To install manually:

1. Clone this repository
2. npm install
3. npm run build
4. Copy (or symlink) the folder into <YourVault>/.obsidian/plugins/root-view/
5. Enable "Root View" in Obsidian's Community Plugins settings

For development with live rebuilds:

npm run dev

Usage

Open Root View from the ribbon icon. You'll see a start screen with two options:

• Load full graph — renders your entire vault (best for smaller vaults or a full overview)
• Filter to a note — search for a specific note and load only its ancestor + descendant chain, which is dramatically faster on large vaults

Once loaded:

• Scroll to zoom, drag the background to pan
• Click a node to open that note
• Drag a node to reposition it manually
• Use the search box (top-left) to locate and jump to any visible note
• Use the filter box to switch to a different note's ancestor/descendant view without returning to the start screen

How it works

• Node data comes from Obsidian's app.metadataCache.resolvedLinks
• Reachability is computed via BFS from each note
• "Core" nodes are the top-N notes by global reachability (configurable threshold)
• "Hub" nodes are notes with many direct outgoing links, independent of reachability — this catches structurally important notes (like a "Movies" index) that reachability alone would miss
• Cycles are detected via Tarjan's strongly-connected-components algorithm, restricted to the currently loaded subgraph
• Layout is a D3 force simulation (forceManyBody, forceLink, forceCollide) with an additional custom radial-spread force to push leaf notes outward from their nearest hub, encouraging thematic clustering in 2D space

Tech stack

• TypeScript
• D3.js (force simulation, zoom, drag)
• esbuild (via the official Obsidian plugin template)

Status

This is a personal project, actively evolving. It's built around a specific vault convention (strict parent → child linking, general → specific), so results may vary on vaults structured differently.

License

MIT — see LICENSE