Taqta

Taqta (Kazakh: тақта, "board") is an Are.na-style visual pinboard inside Obsidian. Collect images, video, links and text as square blocks organised into channels — each channel is a single Obsidian note, so everything stays local, portable, syncable and version-controllable.

Not affiliated with are.na — Taqta is a local, offline workspace inspired by Are.na. It does not sync with the are.na service.

Features

• Home — every channel as an equal-size card: name + stats (block count, last updated) on the left, a strip of content previews on the right.
• Channel — a grid of square blocks. The first cell is the add box: drop or choose files, paste a URL (image, video or link), or type text.
• Square blocks — any media is fitted to the square with object-fit: contain: a tall image fills the height, a wide one fills the width — never cropped, stretched, or overflowing.
• Real media — paste a URL and the media is downloaded into your assets folder, with the title/headline pulled and the original URL kept as the source. Uses yt-dlp when available (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Reddit, Vimeo, …), falling back to Open Graph scraping.
• Block detail — rename, add alt text, edit tags, see source / format / file size, download the original, or delete.
• Tags & filtering — hidden per-block tags; click chips on a channel to filter. Optional lightweight auto-tagging from title + domain.
• Reorder — drag blocks to reorder; order is persisted to the channel file.
• Export — one click writes a flat CSV + JSON next to the channel.
• Native & cross-platform — pure TypeScript, no native deps, themed entirely by your active Obsidian theme. Works on desktop and mobile.

Data model

No separate database. Each channel is one markdown file:

---
taqta-channel: true
title: reno
created: 2026-06-01T10:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-06-22T12:30:00.000Z
blocks:
  - id: lz3k9a2b
    type: image
    title: curtains
    source: https://instagram.com/p/…
    asset: Taqta/Assets/lz3k9a2b.jpg
    alt: linen curtains in afternoon light
    tags: [interior, curtains, instagram]
    width: 1080
    height: 1350
    fileSize: 217088
    contentType: image/jpeg
    created: 2026-06-01T10:00:00.000Z
---
Free-form channel description goes here.

The order of the blocks array is the display order. Reads/writes go through Obsidian's official processFrontMatter API. Why frontmatter and not SQLite / a table / one big JSON? The file stays a real, navigable Obsidian note (graph, links, body description), the data is structured enough for arrays + multi-line text + nested fields, and it syncs and diffs cleanly. Use Export when you want a flat table for spreadsheets or scripts.

Media extraction (yt-dlp)

When a URL is pasted, the fetcher first tries a locally installed yt-dlp — the de-facto media downloader that already supports Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X/Twitter, Reddit, Vimeo and ~1800 sites, so real videos (not just a preview thumbnail) get saved, and new platforms are supported automatically as yt-dlp adds them.

• Install it: brew install yt-dlp / pipx install yt-dlp / winget install yt-dlp. ffmpeg is recommended for high-res merges; Taqta prefers single-file formats so it works without ffmpeg for most social media.
• Desktop only: yt-dlp runs as a subprocess (unavailable on mobile). There, and when yt-dlp isn't installed, Taqta falls back to the Open Graph preview.
• Set the binary path and verify it in Settings → Taqta → Media download → Check.
• For login-walled sites (e.g. Instagram), set Cookies from browser (chrome / safari / firefox / edge / brave).

Adding resolvers

Without yt-dlp, resolvers in src/resolvers/ read Open Graph / Twitter card tags. To add a custom one, implement Resolver and register it before the catch-all generic resolver in src/resolvers/index.ts#rebuild(). Download, asset storage, dimensions and tagging are handled centrally.

Install (development)

npm install
npm run build        # outputs main.js

Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into your vault at <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/taqta/, then enable Taqta in Settings → Community plugins. For live development use npm run dev (watch) and symlink the folder into your vault.

Open with the ribbon grid icon or the command Taqta: Open home.

Settings

• Channels folder / Assets folder — where notes and downloaded media live (default Taqta/Channels and Taqta/Assets).
• Preview thumbnails — how many previews show on a channel card.
• Suggest tags automatically — derive tags from title + domain on add.
• Use yt-dlp / yt-dlp path / Cookies from browser — real media extraction (with a Check button to verify the binary).
• User-Agent — sent when fetching link metadata.

License

MIT © djakish