Chronicle Lanes

Chronicle Lanes turns dated Obsidian notes into an explorable visual timeline. Organise notes into colour-coded categories, compare overlapping histories, follow work that is still in progress, and play the vault back chronologically.

Chronicle Lanes is currently designed for Obsidian Desktop.

Two timeline views

• Chronicle Lanes is the full explorer, with note labels, category counts, filtering, navigation, and a collapsible note inspector.
• Timeline Overview is a compact view that can sit in a tab or dock beside your notes.

Add notes without editing YAML

Right-click a Markdown note and choose Add or edit timeline entry. Set its start date, optional end date, in-progress state, and category in one place.

The editor writes standard properties to the note:

---
doc_start: 2024-01-06
doc_end: 2026-05-18
timeline-group: Development
---

Enable In progress to write doc_end: current. The range then advances automatically to the present day while Obsidian is open.

Explore the chronology

• Group notes by an explicit timeline category, folder, or tag
• Assign persistent colours to discovered categories
• Display single-date events or start-to-end ranges
• Sort by category, latest date, oldest date, or time span
• Merge categories for direct chronological comparison
• Filter by note title, category, or tag
• Zoom, fit, jump to today, and navigate to the active note
• Highlight the current note with a subtle pulse
• Show or hide note names in the compact overview

Timelapse

Play the timeline from left to right and watch notes appear in chronological order. Long-running ranges draw toward their end date or the present, with duration-aware timing that keeps shorter events readable.

Watch the Chronicle Lanes timelapse (MP4)

Supported properties

Dates may be exact ISO dates, years, approximate/circa dates, or BC/BCE years. Legacy start and end properties can also be read as fallbacks.

Diagnostics

Chronicle Lanes reports notes with timeline intent that are missing dates or contain invalid date values. Open the diagnostics from the status counter in the timeline toolbar.

Installation

Community plugins

Once Chronicle Lanes is available in the Obsidian community directory:

1. Open Settings > Community plugins.
2. Select Browse and search for Chronicle Lanes.
3. Install and enable the plugin.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest GitHub release.
2. Place them in <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/chronicle-lanes/.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Chronicle Lanes under Community plugins.

Development

npm install
npm run dev

Before release:

npm run lint
npm run build

Support

Built by Sidepath Studio - small apps, practical tools, and digital experiments.

Chronicle Lanes is a Sidepath Studio tool for Obsidian, built to make dated vault structure easier to explore and understand.

Support Sidepath Studio on Buy Me a Coffee

License

MIT