Commonplace Notes

Commonplace Notes (CPN) is an Obsidian plugin that publishes a curated subset of your vault as a fast, stacked-panes static site — the kind where clicking a link opens the target note in a new column beside the current one, so a reader can follow a train of thought without losing their place. Sites are self-hosted on AWS (S3 + CloudFront), notes are private by default (nothing publishes until you opt a note in), each note gets a stable per-note UID that drives its URL, and the Markdown→HTML pipeline is fully user-extensible. CPN is desktop-only.

Status

Beta (0.2.0, requires Obsidian 1.0.0+). Installed and updated via BRAT. See Getting started for the full install + first-publish walkthrough.

Quick start

The 60-second path (assumes the plugin is installed and enabled):

1. Open Settings → Commonplace Notes and confirm the default profile.
2. Deploy AWS infrastructure with the Deploy publishing infrastructure command (or point the profile at an existing bucket). See Infrastructure deployment.
3. Open a note and run Toggle publishing context: to opt it in (this adds the profile to cpn-publish-contexts; a cpn-uid is generated automatically).
4. Run Publish current note.
5. Run Copy link to current note URL and open it in a browser.

New here? Getting started walks through all of this in detail.

Documentation

• Getting started — install (BRAT + source) and your first publish
• Concepts — glossary of the core ideas
• Commands — every command in the palette
• Settings — every setting, with defaults
• Publishing model — contexts, profiles, UIDs, URLs, invalidation
• Infrastructure deployment — provision AWS from inside Obsidian
• Authentication & access — read-gating, sign-in, and commenting
• Site asset customizations — inject per-profile snippets
• Parser extensions — extend the Markdown→HTML pipeline
• Troubleshooting

Key concepts at a glance

• Publishing profile — a named publish target (bucket, base URL, infra, look & feel). Multiple profiles let one vault feed multiple sites.
• Publish context — a profile ID listed in a note's cpn-publish-contexts; it's how a note opts in to a site.
• UID — a stable per-note identifier (cpn-uid) that drives the site URL, generated the first time a note gains a publish context.
• Stacked URLs — links that open several notes side by side in one view.

Full definitions in the concept glossary.

Building from source

Contributors (end users should use BRAT):

nvm use          # Node 24 (see .nvmrc)
npm install
npm run build    # tsc typecheck + esbuild production bundle → main.js
npm run dev      # esbuild watch mode

The build emits main.js; the plugin ships main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css. Note the npm package name is commonplace-notes-publisher, but the Obsidian plugin ID (in manifest.json, and used at app.plugins.plugins['commonplace-notes']) is commonplace-notes.

Contributing & license

Contributions are welcome — open an issue or PR at zachmueller/commonplace-notes.

Licensed under the MIT License.