Better Store

Overview

Better Store is an Obsidian plugin that replaces day-to-day use of the built-in community plugin browser. It opens as a full workspace tab with real filters, heuristic categories, rendered README previews, GitHub stats, a trending view, and a dashboard for the plugins you already have installed.

It deliberately does not install, update, or remove plugin files itself — install actions hand off to Obsidian's native Community Plugins dialog, so nothing about your vault's security model changes.

Features

• Full workspace view — a filter sidebar, card grid, and detail pane instead of a cramped modal; opens in a tab, a split, or its own window. Stays open while you work.
• Responsive to narrow panes — in a skinny split pane the layout collapses to a single column: filters move into a toggle-able drawer, the detail pane opens as a full-screen sheet, and toolbars wrap. (Desktop-only for now — the mobile experience still needs polish, so the plugin is flagged desktop-only.)
• Filters & sorting — search across name/author/description, category chips, "updated within" (24h → 1 year), minimum downloads, minimum stars, hide installed; sort by downloads, recency, name, trending, GitHub stars, open issues, or recently added.
• Author drill-down — click any author to see everything they've published.
• Full-catalog GitHub scan — with a token, scan every plugin's stars, open issues, and repository creation date into a persistent cache (resumable, cancellable, rate-limit aware) to unlock accurate catalog-wide sorting by those metrics — including a "recently added" view that surfaces genuinely new plugins, not just recently-patched ones.
• GitHub stars on cards — with a token linked, star counts appear on browse cards, fetched only for the cards on screen and cached for the session (togglable).
• "New" detection vs "recently added" — the "New only" filter flags plugins that entered the registry since you started using Better Store (exact, but forward-looking); the scanned "recently added" sort uses repo creation date as a catalog-wide proxy for first release.
• Heuristic categories — Tasks, Sync & Backup, AI, Appearance, Editor, Export & Import, Calendar & Time, Data & Queries, Files & Organization, Publishing & Sharing, Integrations. The official registry has no categories, so these are keyword-derived — imperfect by design and easy to refine.
• Rich details — rendered README with images (sanitized), GitHub stars and open issues, recent releases, and funding links, fetched lazily and cached.
• Trending — local download-delta tracking across catalog refreshes. Builds up as you use the plugin; no external service, no telemetry.
• Installed dashboard — current vs. latest version, update badges, enable/disable toggles (with bulk select), "stale" warnings for plugins unmaintained for a year+, changelog links.
• BRAT panel — when BRAT is installed, lists the beta plugins it tracks and offers one-click add / check-for-updates. Better Store only reads BRAT's list and hands off to BRAT's own commands — never touching another plugin's files.
• Tree view — an explorer-style layout with folders derived from the active sort (download tiers, recency, A–Z, trending, GitHub stars, open issues, recently added), a collapsed Stale folder, persistent expansion, and indent guides.
• Quick jump — a fuzzy search command (Better Store: Search plugins) that opens any plugin's details from anywhere in Obsidian.
• "New" detection — plugins that entered the registry in the last 14 days get a badge and a "New only" filter (togglable).
• Favorites — star plugins to track them; a "Starred only" filter keeps your watchlist one click away.
• Update notifications — a background check marks the ribbon icon (and optionally shows a notice) when installed plugins have updates.
• Update controls — on the Installed tab, skip a specific version (re-notified on the next one), stop checking a plugin entirely, or mute all update nags for 1 hour to 1 week; all reviewable in settings.
• Release notes inline — expand any release in the detail pane to read its changelog without leaving Obsidian.
• Compatibility warnings — flags plugins whose minAppVersion exceeds your Obsidian version before you install.
• Keyboard navigation — arrow keys move through cards and tree rows, Enter opens details, Esc closes the pane.
• Ignore rules — hide individual plugins, everything by an author, or whole categories.
• Plugin profiles — save named enable-sets ("Writing", "Minimal") and switch between them in one click, from the Installed tab or the command palette.
• Export / import — copy your installed list as Markdown or JSON; paste a list back to see what's missing and star it as an install shopping list.
• Maintenance health — a healthy / aging / at-risk chip on the detail pane from update recency and release cadence (togglable).
• Download history — a sparkline built from your own catalog snapshots (togglable).
• Similar plugins — related plugins by shared categories and keywords, one click away in the detail pane (togglable).
• Filter presets — save sidebar filter combinations under a name and reapply them from a dropdown.
• Copy actions — repository URL and BRAT string copy buttons in the detail pane.

Installation

From Community Plugins (recommended)

Better Store is in the official directory: Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search Better Store → Install. Or open the community listing.

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Place them in YourVault/.obsidian/plugins/better-store/.
3. Settings → Community plugins → enable Better Store.

Release assets carry GitHub artifact attestations — verify provenance with gh attestation verify main.js -R Real-Fruit-Snacks/obsidian-better-store.

Getting Started

Open the store from the ribbon icon or the command palette (Better Store: Open store).

Commands

Settings

How It Works

• The catalog comes from the official obsidianmd/obsidian-releases registry and stats files. The multi-megabyte stats file is slimmed to totals + last-updated timestamps and cached inside the plugin's own folder.
• Detail-view data (README, stars, releases) is fetched lazily per plugin — READMEs from raw.githubusercontent.com (no rate limit), API data from GitHub with your optional token.
• Trending compares download counts across your own catalog refreshes (snapshots kept locally, capped at 30).
• READMEs are third-party content: they're rendered through Obsidian's MarkdownRenderer and then passed through Obsidian's DOMPurify-backed sanitizer as defense in depth. Funding links are only accepted with http(s) schemes.
• Enable/disable toggles use an internal Obsidian API (the same one used by well-known plugin managers). If a future Obsidian update changes it, those toggles may stop working until this plugin updates — everything else is unaffected.

Architecture

src/
├── main.ts              plugin entry: commands, service wiring, update checks
├── view.ts              ItemView hosting the Svelte root
├── settings.ts          declarative settings tab
├── data/                pure, fully unit-tested modules (no Obsidian imports)
│   ├── registry.ts      registry parsing + stats slimming
│   ├── categories.ts    keyword → category heuristics
│   ├── filter.ts        filter/sort engine
│   ├── tree.ts          sort-derived folder grouping
│   ├── trending.ts      download-delta snapshots + history
│   ├── newness.ts       new-plugin detection
│   ├── service.ts       fetch + cache orchestration (IO injected)
│   ├── installed.ts     installed-plugin status
│   ├── profiles.ts      enable-set diffing
│   ├── portability.ts   export/import of plugin lists
│   ├── health.ts        maintenance assessment
│   ├── similar.ts       related-plugin scoring
│   ├── scan.ts          full-catalog scan selection
│   ├── updates.ts       update suppression (skip / mute / don't-check)
│   ├── brat.ts          BRAT data parsing + command ids
│   ├── token.ts         GitHub token check + secret migration
│   └── ...              versions, readme URL rewriting, formatting
└── ui/                  Svelte 5 components
    ├── StoreView.svelte tabs, state, wiring
    ├── FilterSidebar / PluginCard / DetailPane / InstalledTab
    ├── TreeView / Sparkline / Icon
    ├── QuickJumpModal / modals (name prompt, import, profiles)
    └── store-context.ts typed access to Obsidian internals

Privacy & Permissions

• Network — requests go only to the official obsidianmd/obsidian-releases registry, raw.githubusercontent.com, and api.github.com. No telemetry, no third-party services.
• Clipboard — write-only, and only when you click a copy/export action. The plugin never reads your clipboard.
• Storage — settings and UI state live in Obsidian's plugin data (data.json); caches live in the plugin's own folder; the optional GitHub token lives in Obsidian's secret storage — plugin data records only the linked secret's name, never the token.

Self-hosting

The repository ships a .gitlab-ci.yml, so the project can also be hosted and built on a self-hosted GitLab instance — the pipeline runs the same verify/build steps, publishes the plugin files as artifacts, and serves the docs site via GitLab Pages.

Development

npm install
npm run dev            # watch build
npm run check          # TypeScript type check
npm run check:svelte   # Svelte component type check
npm test               # unit tests (138)
npm run build          # production build + bundle verification

Junction/symlink the repo into a test vault's .obsidian/plugins/better-store and enable it.

License

MIT