Is there a good AI plugin for Obsidian yet?
Copilot, Smart Connections and Text Generator are all "good" AI plugins in Obsidian
Readit NewsThere's no decent RAG functionality, AFAICT, but the Text-Generator plugin has been fantastic w/ larger contexts and a template that pulls either/both links and backlinks into the inference query window.
Hands-down my most productive interface to LLMs for [years since GPT3.5] years running.
> There's no decent RAG functionality
Do you have any examples of what decent RAG functionality might look like? And where the current plugins fall short?
Speaking as a superficial git user, can you say why not simply git init on the vault is enough to use it?
Why is a plugin necessary?
I prefer not using git the plugin, but still commit to a repo.
Sometimes you'll have to push a big ugly commit.
But other times the manual diff review can save you from a headache, like if you have some obscure syncing going on, like syncing READMEs and other markdown files to external repos to manage all markdown with the same Obsidian interface.
Also if you need to maintain a high-standard for the contents of your notes while still utilizing AI tools, the manual diff review can prove invaluable in ensuring trusted resources don't turn into slop
I've never had it wipe anything before[1], but I do have a stretch of 200+ commits in my personal vault where my laptop and desktop were fighting back and forth on the contents of one setting file.
One caveat is that the obsidian android app DOES NOT seem to save files to storage until the note unloads, which can break things if you pull in the middle of making changes.
[1] Though I have had to fix my termux clone of the vault enough times that I now just nuke it and re-clone instead of bothering with git - but that's more of a "termux likes to break git" issue than anything
For better/worse, I've noticed save seems to be triggered when moving to a new line. Plenty of times I've unloaded (swiped away the app) only to have a missing last line later when I get on desktop. Building a habit of adding a few trailing newlines seems to have mostly resolved this for me
One thing I still need is the ability to paste screenshots in-line in notes easily, like how OneNote handles it.
Admittedly, I don't know how OneNote handles it.
But as an Obsidian power-user, I regularly paste screenshots into notes
There is a plugin that allows templating the screenshot file name, so naming the pasted screenshot, using the same as the note where it's being pasted, and a timestamp, for example, is easy.
Are there any good LLM plugins for Obsidian, beyond just throwing Claude Code / Codex at your markdown folder?
Copilot, Smart Connections and Text Generator are all popular LLM plugins in Obsidian
I'd hope that any inference performed in a given note would take as context not only the full text of the note, but its nearest neighbors—although, frankly, what I really want are the implicit definitions of proper nouns, ie links.
I also frequently generate articles based on the subject's backlinks, ie mentions in other notes.
Both of those functionalities are provided by Obsidian's core featureset, so all that's missing—and what might provide outsized value—is indexing notes based not only on the embeddings of their literal text, but on meta-text such as: the questions they might answer; the definitions of their principle subjects; counterfactual statements they falsify.
All of which would allow the editor to bring up a relevant note when writing/reviewing another–ie the "unknown knowns".
I think this technique is akin to "knowledge enrichment", or "meta-embeddings," but I think actually those terms have lower-level meanings.
Of course, generating these embeddings would make the indexing process slower and more failure prone, and so I'd be even more likely to fail to get it working and call it a dud.
That would be perfect!
Smart Connections does seem to have improved a lot recently.