obsidian-pi-plugin

A Pi-powered reading companion in the Obsidian sidebar.

Commands

Command	Default key	What it does
Pi: Toggle focus	Cmd+Shift+/	Moves the keyboard to Pi, or back to your note if you are already in Pi
Pi: Add the note you are reading to thread	Cmd+Shift+>	Describes the note you are in and puts that description into Pi's editor. Inserted, never submitted — add your question and press enter yourself.

Install

macOS only, Obsidian 1.13.7 or newer. Built and used on Apple Silicon; the Intel binaries are shipped but untested.

1. Download the zip from the latest release.

2. Unzip it into your vault's .obsidian/plugins/, so the plugin lands at <Vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-pi-plugin/.

3. Clear the quarantine flag your browser attached to the download:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "<Vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-pi-plugin"
   

   Harmless if there is none, and it saves a puzzling Could not load node-pty should macOS decide to enforce it against the unsigned addon.

4. In Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins, turn them on if they are off, then enable Pi.

5. In Settings → Community plugins → Pi, fill in Extra PATH directories, so the plugin can find pi and node, and the DeepSeek API key. The first is normally required, the second always is.

Obsidian's own community-plugin installer could not deliver this plugin: it fetches main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css and nothing else, and this plugin also needs node_modules/node-pty in its folder. Hence the zip.

Configuration

Settings → Community plugins → Pi:

• Extra PATH directories — where to look for pi and node. Obsidian launched from the Finder inherits a bare PATH that usually reaches neither, so this is normally required. One per line or colon-separated; absolute paths only. To find yours, run command -v node and npm prefix -g in a terminal — the answers are the directory holding node, and npm's prefix with /bin. A pane that cannot find pi says so and names this setting.
• DeepSeek API key — required. A pane opened without one says so and waits.
• Model — deepseek-flash (default) or deepseek-v4-pro. Applies to sessions started from then on; both can be cycled inside a running session.

Vault skills

Put vault-specific skills in <Vault>/.pi/skills. The plugin loads that directory explicitly when it exists, while continuing to disable Pi's automatic skill discovery, so global, user, and other project skill locations are ignored. If the directory does not exist, it is simply omitted and Pi starts without a missing-path diagnostic.