Design Trail

Design Trail is an Obsidian plugin for capturing design decisions and browsing the reasoning behind a project's evolution. It is designed for product designers, UX students, design engineers, and anyone who wants to preserve process—not only final artifacts.

What it does

• Capture a structured decision without leaving Obsidian.
• Record the problem, decision, alternatives, reasoning, feedback, and outcome.
• Link the decision to a project, source note, and optional image in the vault.
• Browse decisions chronologically in a filterable timeline side panel.
• Keep every entry as ordinary Markdown with readable frontmatter.

Design Trail makes no network requests and stores no proprietary database. Disable the plugin and the decision notes remain usable.

Getting started

1. Enable Design Trail in Settings → Community plugins.
2. Run Design Trail: Capture design decision from the command palette, or use the route icon in the ribbon.
3. Record the project, problem, decision, alternatives, reasoning, feedback, and outcome.
4. Open Design Trail: Open timeline to browse and filter the history.

By default, entries are stored in Design Trail/<project>/ as normal Markdown. You can change the root folder in the plugin settings.

Entry format

Every entry includes readable YAML properties and Markdown sections. This makes decisions searchable, linkable, portable, and compatible with Obsidian features such as backlinks, Properties, Search, and Dataview.

Mobile and accessibility

Design Trail supports desktop and mobile. Controls use native Obsidian components, responsive layouts, visible keyboard focus states, and high-contrast surfaces that remain readable with both light and dark themes.

Privacy

• No accounts.
• No analytics or telemetry.
• No network requests.
• No proprietary database.
• All content remains in your vault as Markdown.

Installation

Once accepted into the Obsidian Community Plugins directory, install it from Settings → Community plugins → Browse and search for Design Trail.

For manual installation, copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from a release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/design-trail/, then enable the plugin in Obsidian.

Development

npm install
npm run build
npm test

Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/design-trail/ for local testing.

Support

Open a GitHub issue with the Obsidian version, device type, steps to reproduce, and screenshots when relevant.

License

MIT