Daily Checklist

A minimal Obsidian sidebar plugin for a lightweight daily checklist. Check off your daily routines without leaving your active note, and optionally sync them into your daily note as an Obsidian callout.

Features

• Right-sidebar checklist with one focused section: Daily Checklist.
• Check / uncheck items with one click.
• Edit mode to add, rename, delete, and drag-and-drop reorder items (desktop).
• Daily reset. Checked state clears automatically when the local date rolls over.
• Optional daily note sync. Items are written into an Obsidian callout in today's daily note. The callout type, title, and fold state are configurable.
• Conservative daily-note safety. The plugin only ever touches today's daily note, only after an explicit checklist mutation, only inside its exact configured callout, and only when the sync toggle is on.
• Focus-preserving startup. Optionally add the view to the right sidebar at startup without stealing focus from your active sidebar tab.

Screenshots

Installation

Manual installation

1. Download the latest release from the Releases page and extract:
   • main.js
   • manifest.json
   • styles.css
2. Copy those three files into your vault at:

   <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/daily-checklist/
   

3. In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins, refresh the list, and enable Daily Checklist.

(The plugin is not yet on Obsidian's community plugin directory; manual installation is the supported path for now.)

Settings overview

• Enable daily checklist — toggles whether the sidebar section renders.
• Add Daily Checklist to sidebar on startup — when on, ensures the view is available in the right sidebar at startup without stealing focus from your active sidebar tab. Manual ribbon / command opens still reveal and focus the view.
• Write checklist to daily note — gates all daily-note writes. When off, the plugin never touches your daily note.
• Daily note callout type — the string inside [!type]. Defaults to todo. Allowed characters: letters, digits, _, -.
• Daily note callout title — the title shown after the marker. Defaults to Daily Checklist.
• Daily note callout fold state — Collapsed writes -, Open writes +.
• Daily notes folder — folder where today's note lives.
• Daily note date format — moment.js format string. Forward slashes create nested folders (e.g. YYYY/MM-MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD - dddd [Note]).
• Daily note template path — optional. Used only when creating a new daily note.
• Checklist items — add, delete, and reorder the items shown in the sidebar.

Daily note integration

When "Write checklist to daily note" is enabled, the plugin writes (and updates) a single Obsidian callout in today's daily note. With default settings:

> [!todo]- Daily Checklist
> - [ ] Exercise
> - [x] Take vitamins
> - [ ] Evening walk
> - [ ] Read
> - [ ] Journal

The callout type, title, and fold state are configurable.

Daily note safety

These rules are non-negotiable:

• Only today's daily note is ever read or written.
• No historical scanning, no bulk modification of other notes.
• No writes on plugin load, sidebar open, settings open, or render. Only explicit checklist mutations (check / uncheck / add / rename / delete / reorder) trigger writes, and only when the "Write checklist to daily note" setting is on.
• Only the exact configured callout is rewritten. Plain markdown headings, other callout types, other titles, and the opposite fold marker are all ignored.
• Replacement boundary: the plugin replaces from the configured callout header line through the last consecutive line starting with >. Content after that boundary is never modified.
• Existing daily notes are never overwritten. A missing daily note is created; an existing one is read in place.
• Template content is applied only at creation time. Existing notes are never re-templated.
• Path traversal blocked. Folder/template paths containing .. are rejected with a notice.
• Atomic writes via app.vault.process.

If you change the callout type / title / fold state mid-stream, the plugin does not retroactively migrate or rewrite the old callout. The next mutation will append a fresh callout with the new configured header; the old one stays in place for you to delete manually if you want to.

A note on autocomplete

The "Daily notes folder" and "Daily note template path" settings show autocomplete suggestions drawn from your vault's folder and markdown-file paths. The plugin lists path names only — it does not read the contents of any note for autocomplete and does not scan or modify historical notes. The autocomplete is read-only and only runs while you're typing into those two settings fields.

Development

npm install          # one-time
npm run dev          # esbuild watch — rebuilds main.js on every save
npm run build        # production build
npx tsc --noEmit     # typecheck only

To test locally, symlink (or copy) this folder into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/daily-checklist/, then enable the plugin in Community plugins.

Both npm run build and npx tsc --noEmit should pass clean before shipping any change.

Release files

Each GitHub release attaches exactly three files at the top level:

• main.js
• manifest.json
• styles.css

Users drop those three into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/daily-checklist/.

Releases are built by GitHub Actions from the tagged source. Each release asset (main.js, manifest.json, styles.css) is published with a GitHub artifact attestation so that downloaders can verify the asset was produced by this repository's CI from the tagged commit.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.