Pollinations for Obsidian

Generate text and images with Pollinations inside your notes, paying with your own Pollen.

• Text from a prompt or straight from the selection - the answer lands at the cursor, on a new line below, or by replacing the selection.
• Images with a click - the picture is saved into your vault and embedded in the note.
• Sign in with a code (device flow), or paste an API key. No secret is baked into the plugin, and the sign-in is attributed to your own app key if you set one.
• Any model from the live lists - a model browser inside Obsidian searches the text and image catalogues as they exist right now.
• Retries and plain-language errors - 429s, server errors and network hiccups are retried with backoff; every failure turns into one readable sentence.

Requirements and disclosures

• An account and pollen are needed. Generation is billed to the key you paste or sign in with; the plugin has no free tier of its own. Create a key at enter.pollinations.ai/keys, or sign in with a device code.
• Network use. The plugin talks to gen.pollinations.ai for generation and enter.pollinations.ai for sign-in, and to no other host.
• Keys stay on your device, in this plugin's data.json. There is no telemetry and no analytics of any kind.
• License: MIT.

Install

From the community plugin directory (once it is listed)

1. Settings > Community plugins > Browse and search for Pollinations.
2. Install, then enable it.

With BRAT (before it is listed)

1. Install BRAT.
2. BRAT > Add beta plugin and enter xiaotian1171/pollinations-obsidian.

By hand

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Put them in <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/pollinations/.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Pollinations in the community plugins list.

Demo

A two minute run-through of everything the plugin does:

1. Enable the plugin, then open Settings > Pollinations and either
   • click Sign in with a code - a notice and a small window show a code such as ABCD-1234, you open enter.pollinations.ai/device, enter the code, approve, and the window closes by itself once the key arrives; or
   • paste an sk_... key from enter.pollinations.ai/keys into API key.
2. Press Test next to Test the connection. A notice reports how many text models are live, for example connected, 188 text models available.
3. In a note, put the caret where you want the answer and run the command Pollinations: Generate text at the cursor from the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+P). Type Name a village in one word and press Generate. The word appears at the caret; the status bar reports the token usage, for example Pollinations: 9 tokens.
4. Select a paragraph, then run Pollinations: Generate text from the selection with the selection template set to Summarise in one sentence: {{text}}. The summary is inserted according to Where generated text goes.
5. Run Pollinations: Generate an image and embed it, type a wooden watermill, flat illustration, and press Generate. The image is saved next to the note (or in the folder you configured), embedded where the caret was, and a notice shows the path.
6. Run Pollinations: Browse the live model list, filter by publisher, and click Use for text or Use for images to make that model the default.

The ribbon icon on the left runs step 3 directly.

Commands

Command	What it does
Generate text at the cursor	Asks for a prompt (pre-filled with the selection) and inserts the answer
Generate text from the selection	Sends the selection through the selection template and inserts the answer
Generate text and review it before inserting	Shows the answer in a window with Insert / Copy / Discard
Generate an image and embed it	Asks for a prompt, saves the image into the vault and embeds it
Generate an image from the selection	Uses the selection as the prompt
Browse the live model list	Searches the live text and image catalogues and sets a default
Sign in with a Pollen account	Runs the device flow
Test the connection and count the models	One request to the model list

Settings

Setting	Meaning
API key	Your sk_... key. Written by the sign-in flow, or pasted by you
App key	Optional pk_... publishable key, so sign-ins are attributed to your Pollinations account
Text model	Any id from the live text list. Empty means the quick default, nova-fast
Image model	Any id from the live image list. Empty means the quick default, tongyi-mai/z-image-turbo
System prompt	Sent with text requests. Empty switches to the cheaper one-shot /text/{prompt} route
Selection template	How the selection is sent; {{text}} is replaced with it
Temperature, Max tokens	Passed to chat completions. 0 tokens means no limit
Image folder	Vault folder for generated images. Empty means "next to the note"
Image size	Width and height, 64 to 4096
Where generated text goes	At the cursor, on a new line below, or replacing the selection
Open the sign-in page in the browser	Turn off if you would rather open the link yourself

Signing in with a code

The device flow means the plugin never ships a key:

1. The plugin asks /api/device/code for a code (with your app key as client_id when one is configured).
2. You get the code in a window and a notice, and the browser opens enter.pollinations.ai/device?user_code=....
3. The plugin polls /api/device/token every 5 seconds. A pending answer is expected and not an error; slow_down makes it wait longer.
4. On approval it stores the returned sk_... in the plugin's settings, reads /api/device/userinfo for your account name, and closes the window.

The key stays on your device, in data.json for this plugin only. Sign out removes it; you can also revoke it on the Pollinations site.

Errors

Kind	Meaning	Retried
auth (401, 403)	The key is missing, wrong or revoked	no
balance (402, or a body that says so)	The key is valid but out of Pollen	no
rate_limit (429)	Too many requests	yes, 0.75s then 1.5s
bad_request (400, 404, 422)	Unknown model id or bad parameters; the API's own message is shown	no
server (5xx)	Pollinations or the upstream model failed	yes
network	DNS, TLS, timeout or a dead connection	yes
parse	A 2xx answer that cannot be read	no

Image responses are kept as bytes and never decoded as text.

Privacy

The plugin sends only what you ask it to: your prompt, the model, and the size. It talks to gen.pollinations.ai for generation and enter.pollinations.ai for sign-in. There is no analytics, no telemetry and no other endpoint. Your key is stored in this plugin's data.json and nowhere else.

Tests

The logic that decides URLs, payloads, parsing, error kinds, file names and where the answer lands is plain TypeScript in src/api.ts and src/format.ts, with no Obsidian imports, so it runs headless:

npm install
npm run typecheck   # tsc, no errors
npm test            # 180 checks, no network and no keys
npm run test:live   # the same suite plus real API calls (needs POLLINATIONS_API_KEY)
npm run build       # tsc + esbuild -> main.js

npm run test:live is the evidence script; it prints real status codes, latencies and payload shapes. A run produced:

• the prompt route 200 in 3.02s, text/plain, answer Hello, friendly human.
• chat 200 in 2.52s, model us.amazon.nova-micro-v1:0, and the answer extracted from choices[0].message.content
• GET /text/models 200 with 188 text models and GET /image/models 200 with 77 image models, read into the same structure the model browser uses
• GET /image/... 200 in 0.43s, image/jpeg, 28 813 bytes, recognised as jpg
• POST /api/device/code 200 in 0.89s with user_code=8ZMYESJU, interval=5, expires_in=1800, then POST /api/device/token 400 {"error":"authorization_pending"} classified as pending, not as a failure
• /v1/audio/speech 402 classified as a balance failure: speech is a paid model and the free account used for the run has no pollen

CI runs the type check, the suite and the build on pull requests (.github/workflows/tests.yml).

Layout

src/api.ts        URLs, request shapes, parsing, error kinds - no Obsidian
src/format.ts     file names, templates, where text lands - no Obsidian
src/settings.ts   defaults and repair of the settings object - no Obsidian
src/main.ts       commands, modals, settings tab, sign-in, the HTTP calls
tests/run.ts      the headless suite and the live check
main.js           the built plugin, committed as the community directory requires

Development

npm install
npm run dev     # esbuild watch, writes main.js
npm test        # after each change

License

MIT, see LICENSE.