askMyu

The askMyu plugin for Obsidian connects your vault to askMyu. It sends the notes you choose to askMyu, encrypted before they leave your computer, and shows your day in a pane beside your notes.

What it does

• Today. A pane on the right with the morning brief and the day's meetings. Each person, company, space and meeting is one row with the one thing Myu has to say about it. Rows that need you come first. It refreshes every five minutes.
• Myu's questions, with buttons. A yes/no question shows Yes and No. A question with set answers shows them. Every question also has "Not now" (it comes back tomorrow) and "Don't ask again".
• What you owe. Under Today: what you owe people and what they owe you.
• Before a meeting. A card for the meeting: what it is for, what happened last time, your moves, a block per person, and what to know before you go in. Myu's question before the meeting is answered on the card.
• Chat. Talk to Myu beside your notes: about a note, a selection, a person, a meeting. A long paste becomes a block beside your words. "Ask Myu about this note" sends the note.
• Capture. Notes in the folders you choose are encrypted on this computer and sent to askMyu when you stop editing them. One note stays one entry however many times you edit it. Notes keep their own dates, so older notes arrive as history.
• Meeting notes (optional, asked separately). Notes in folders you choose, or tagged myu-meeting: true, become meetings Myu understands: decisions, owners, follow-ups. Unlike journal notes, meeting notes are readable by askMyu's servers. The consent screen says this before anything is shared.
• Save to vault (optional, one item at a time). A canvas as an Obsidian .canvas file, or a conversation as a note. The plugin always asks first, and marks every file it writes with myu-generated: true so you can find them all.
• Canvases. Press a card on a canvas and Myu answers in the conversation. Old canvases say so and offer Refresh. Canvases Myu makes while you are away are offered as rows, never opened on you.
• Help Myu. People Myu cannot place, such as a LinkedIn profile to confirm, appear as rows in Today. One decision each.
• Correcting a person. From a card: fix a fact (name, role, company, email), correct or delete a memory, merge two people who are the same person, archive, or delete for good after confirming.
• People from your mail. People who were only on some of your emails stay out of the people list. "Keep track" brings one back. Search still finds them.
• Spaces. Every space you belong to has a row under Spaces in Today. It opens that space's conversation with Myu: one question at a time, with buttons when a question has set answers. See the team's retro shows the retro as a page to read. Archived spaces are not listed.
• Interview debriefs. A debrief has its own conversation with Myu and a row in Today. The interview time shows on the calendar beside your other events.
• Myu's folder (optional). A page per person, every open commitment as a checkbox that syncs back when you tick it, Myu/Me.md with your own card, Myu/Today.md with what needs you today, and a daily log at Myu/Log/<day>.md. The pages have properties at the top that Obsidian's Bases and the Dataview plugin can read.
• What is new. The status bar shows what came in since you last looked ("myu · 3 new in Today · 2 in Spaces"). On a phone, the same words sit at the top of the Today pane.
• Snippets. Settings → Weave Myu in gives you ready-made blocks for your daily and weekly notes, a Tasks query for your commitments, a people table, and a button to Today. Nothing is written to your vault unless you press Keep a copy in Myu/.
• Connections. Google and Microsoft accounts, Slack and Zulip, all from settings. The plugin also saves this computer's time zone to your account when it changes, so your morning brief follows your day.
• Names in notes. [[Marcus Webb]] in a note tells Myu a person is mentioned. The plugin passes the name along. It never decides who anyone is.
• Feedback. Send feedback from the plugin, with up to five files from your computer (10 MB each, 15 MB in all). They go to the team by email and nowhere else.

What Myu's folder looks like:

The people in the pictures are made up.

Getting started

1. Install the plugin from Obsidian's community plugins, or by hand from a release.

2. Sign in. The plugin asks for your askMyu account. You can create one from the plugin.

3. Give this vault the key. Your notes are locked with a key that only your own devices have, so a new vault needs a copy. The connect window offers up to three ways:

   • Your password for new devices, if you set one in askMyu. Type it and you are in.
   • Approve from another device. The window shows a 4-digit code. Type it into askMyu on your phone or in the web app.
   • Your recovery phrase. The 12 words you saved when you set up encryption.

   The password and the phrase are used on this computer and not stored.

4. Choose what to share. Settings → What Myu can read. Nothing is shared until you choose a folder. Any single note can opt out with myu: false in its properties.

5. Turn on Myu's folder if you want Myu to write pages into your vault. It is off until you turn it on.

Common questions

• Can I run my own server, or use it offline? No. There is one server, myu.askmyu.com, and it is the only place the plugin talks to. Offline, everything Myu already wrote into your vault still opens, because it is plain markdown and canvas files. Capture pauses and catches up when you are back online.
• What exactly is sent? Only notes in the folders you chose, encrypted on this computer before they leave, plus the requests listed under "Everything it sends" below. Nothing is tracked or measured.
• Can I keep my journal, or any note, out of it? Yes. Share only the folders you choose. Nothing is preselected. A single note opts out with myu: false in its properties.
• Will it change my notes? No. Myu writes only inside its own folder (Myu/ by default). Your notes are read when shared, and linked to, never edited.
• Can I change the folder? Yes, in settings. Everything Myu writes lives under it.
• How do I delete my data? "Remove everything Myu wrote" (in settings, or as a command) sends every file Myu made to the trash. "Delete my account" removes everything on the server. "Export everything" and "Request my data archive" get you a copy first.

What it will not do

• No pop-ups about people. Obsidian's notices are used for errors and status only.
• No writing into your vault until you ask. Everything Myu writes is behind its own consent screen, lands under one folder you choose, and carries myu-generated: true. Myu never writes into notes you authored.
• No reading before you choose. Until you pick a folder to share, the plugin does not watch your vault at all.

If you uninstall

• Every file under Myu/ stays as it is. None of it needs the plugin to open.
• Your own notes were never changed.
• The plugin's own settings file (data.json) goes with the plugin. It holds your sign-in token and a locked copy of your key. Nothing usable is left on this computer.
• Your account stays. Delete it from Settings → askMyu → Delete account, or on the web.

Getting your data out

• Export everything into the vault (Settings → askMyu → Advanced, or the command): every page, every conversation as a note, every canvas that still exists on the server, and a receipt at Myu/Export.md saying what was written.
• Request my data archive: everything the server holds, as one encrypted zip. The link comes by email. The passphrase is shown once and never stored.

How the encryption works, in plain words

Your notes are encrypted on this computer before they leave, with the same key your other askMyu devices use.

That key is stored on this computer in locked form. The thing that unlocks it is kept on the server. Neither half is useful on its own. When Obsidian starts, the plugin fetches the server's half over your sign-in, unlocks the key in memory, and keeps it there. Nothing unlocked is written to disk.

What this means for you:

• A new vault gets the key one of three ways: your password for new devices, approval from a device you already use, or your recovery phrase. See Getting started.
• Starting up offline leaves the vault locked. No network means no key. Capture pauses with a badge until you reconnect.
• You can revoke a device. Removing this device in askMyu deletes the server's half, which makes the locked copy on this computer useless for good.
• Obsidian has no plugin sandbox. Any plugin you install can read any other plugin's files, including this one's data.json. The split above limits what that file is worth on its own. No plugin can protect itself from another plugin that tampers with Obsidian itself. That is true of every plugin you install.

What the plugin can access

• Network: only the askMyu server. Every request is listed below.
• Your vault: it reads the notes and folders you allow in Settings → What Myu can read. It lists the vault's file names (never their contents) to find your own person pages and the files Myu wrote. It writes only under the Myu/ folder, after your consent, plus one CSS file in your vault's settings folder (.obsidian/snippets/myu-look.css) when you press Install the look. Never outside the vault.
• Clipboard: only when you press a copy button: your recovery phrase, or a snippet from Weave Myu in. The plugin reads the clipboard only to clear the phrase you just copied.
• Account: required. askMyu is a service, and the plugin is a way to use it.
• Cost: free during the beta. Creating an account means agreeing to the Beta Participation Terms and the Privacy Policy. The plugin shows them with a checkbox, and the server records which version you agreed to.

Every permission is a row in Settings → askMyu, and every one can be changed or withdrawn there:

Everything it sends to the server

Obsidian asks plugin authors to say what their plugin sends over the network. This section lists all of it. The plugin talks only to the askMyu server (myu.askmyu.com). No other services, no analytics, no ad networks.

Links that open in your browser. A few buttons open a web page: the terms and the privacy policy on askmyu.com, the askMyu web app, the look file on github.com, and a person's LinkedIn profile from their card. The page opens only when you press the button. The plugin itself never loads those sites.

Other web addresses in the code, never contacted. A few more addresses appear in the plugin's code, and the plugin never connects to any of them:

• Examples shown inside empty input fields, to show the expected format: calendar.google.com (a calendar link), docs.google.com (a Google Doc link), caldav.fastmail.com (a calendar server), yourorg.zulipchat.com (a Zulip address).
• Made-up sample data in the built-in demo backend (Settings → askMyu → Use mock backend), which runs entirely inside the plugin: calendar.google.com, docs.google.com, slack.com, accounts.google.com, login.microsoftonline.com, linkedin.com.
• www.w3.org, the standard name that marks an image as SVG when a canvas is saved.

Why some of it is encoded text. Encrypted notes and locked keys are binary data. The plugin turns them into text (base64) to send them, and back again. That is the only encoding it does, and the plugin's code ships readable, not minified, so anyone can check.

No usage tracking. The plugin does not measure, count or report how you use it, and there is no switch to turn that on. A build check fails if any part of the plugin outside its one network module opens a connection. askMyu's servers log requests the way any service does; the privacy policy describes that.

In the tables, "nothing but the request" means the server learns only that you asked, and which signed-in account asked.

Account, keys and sign-in

What you share

Reading your day

Myu's folder (opt-in)

Telling Myu who you are, and connecting sources (all opt-in)

The plugin also registers seven obsidian:// links (myu, myu-prep, myu-card, myu-chat, myu-canvas, myu-signin, myu-connected), so that askMyu's emails, its web sign-in page and the notes Myu writes can open the right pane in Obsidian. Email programs strip links of that kind, so emails point at a page on the askMyu server that opens the link for you. Those links carry only the id or name of the meeting, canvas or person to open. The sign-in link carries a one-time code that stops working after five minutes.

For developers

pnpm install
pnpm --filter @askmyu/obsidian dev          # esbuild watch → main.js
pnpm --filter @askmyu/obsidian type-check
pnpm --filter @askmyu/obsidian lint
pnpm --filter @askmyu/obsidian test         # behavioural tests
pnpm --filter @askmyu/obsidian verify       # structural checks
pnpm --filter @askmyu/obsidian build        # production bundle

pnpm verify enforces the structural rules, including the two that keep this plugin listable: all network traffic goes through src/transport/ (so client-side telemetry cannot be added by accident; Obsidian's developer policies forbid it), and no module assigns HTML as a string.

Turn on Settings → askMyu → Use mock backend to run the whole unlock path against an in-memory stand-in, including its failure modes.

To test in a real vault, symlink the package into it:

ln -s "$PWD" "$VAULT/.obsidian/plugins/askmyu"

then enable askMyu in Community plugins (Restricted Mode off).

Styling Myu

Everything Myu renders carries a stable myu-* class: .myu-voice (Myu's words), .myu-whisper (quiet labels), .myu-chat-block, .myu-canvas-component, .myu-affordance (buttons). You can restyle Myu's panes with an ordinary CSS snippet, the same way you style any plugin. The plugin itself never overrides your theme.

One look ships with the plugin: snippets/myu-look.css, with the web app's accents and a serif voice. Settings → askMyu → Advanced → Myu look → Install the look writes it into your vault's config folder (.obsidian/snippets/myu-look.css) and turns it on. The same row turns it off, updates it after a plugin update, or removes it. Nothing is fetched: the look for the build you are running is the look it installs. The file is yours after that. Edit it (the row will not overwrite an edited copy without asking), or take the raw file from https://github.com/AskMyu/askmyu-obsidian-plugin/raw/main/snippets/myu-look.css and manage it by hand.