eBrain Gardener

Obsidian Plugin — A PROCESS → TRIAGE → PUBLISH pipeline for digital garden vaults.

Bring your digital gardening workflow natively into Obsidian. Inbox scoring, LLM-powered frontmatter enrichment, and WikiLink suggestions — no terminal, no Python, no manual copy-paste.

Features

Concepts

Notes in your inbox folders are automatically scored using three signals:

score = name_quality (×0.4) + frontmatter_completeness (×0.3) + maturity (×0.3)

Notes with a total score ≥ 0.7 appear highlighted in the sidebar as ready to process.

Installation

Via BRAT (recommended — gets updates automatically)

1. Install BRAT from the Obsidian community plugins
2. Open BRAT settings → Add Beta Plugin
3. Enter: karx/kaaroGarden
4. Enable eBrain Gardener in Settings → Community Plugins

Manual install

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy them to .obsidian/plugins/ebrain-gardener/ in your vault
3. Enable eBrain Gardener in Settings → Community Plugins → Reload plugins

Quick Start

1. Open Settings → eBrain Gardener
2. Choose your LLM provider and paste your API key
3. Set your inbox folder names (default: Inbox, 0_Inbox)
4. Click the 🌱 ribbon icon to open the Garden Sidebar
5. Open any inbox note → press Mod+Shift+G to process it
6. Review the suggested frontmatter in the diff modal → accept changes

Configuration

API Key Security

API keys are stored in .obsidian/plugins/ebrain-gardener/data.json. If you sync your vault to the cloud, add .obsidian/plugins/ebrain-gardener/data.json to your sync exclusion list — or use Ollama for a fully local, key-free setup.

LLM Providers

Commands

All commands are accessible via the Command Palette (Mod+P).

Custom Skill Prompt

By default, the plugin uses a built-in system prompt based on the PARA framework and digital gardening conventions. You can override it with your own:

1. Create a markdown file anywhere in your vault (e.g., Resources/SKILL.md)
2. Write your custom system prompt — YAML frontmatter is automatically stripped
3. Set Skill Prompt Path in settings to the vault-relative path

This lets you tune the LLM's tagging taxonomy, frontmatter schema, or writing style to match your vault's conventions.

Privacy & Network

This plugin makes outbound HTTPS requests only when you explicitly trigger a Process or Publish command, and only to the LLM provider you configure in settings:

No data is sent to the plugin author's servers. Your vault content (the active note's frontmatter and body) is sent to whichever provider you choose, subject to that provider's privacy policy. API keys are stored locally in data.json and never leave your device except as the Authorization header sent to your chosen provider.

Developer Setup

Clone & install

git clone https://github.com/karx/kaaroGarden.git
cd ebrain-gardener
npm install

Configure vault path (optional — for auto-deploy on build)

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env: VAULT_PATH=/path/to/your/vault

Dev mode (watch + auto-copy to vault)

npm run dev

Builds in watch mode and copies main.js, manifest.json, styles.css to .obsidian/plugins/ebrain-gardener/ on every change. Reload Obsidian with Ctrl+R.

Production build

npm run build

Project Structure

ebrain-gardener/
  main.ts                      Plugin entry point
  styles.css                   Plugin styles
  manifest.json                Obsidian plugin metadata
  esbuild.config.mjs           Build config
  scripts/
    deploy.mjs                 Auto-copy to vault after build
  src/
    scoring.ts                 Inbox scoring engine
    settings/
      types.ts                 Settings interface + defaults
      secrets.ts               API key storage
      SettingsTab.ts           Settings UI
    llm/
      provider.ts              Vendor-agnostic LLM interface
      gemini.ts                Gemini adapter
      openai.ts                OpenAI + Anthropic adapter
      ollama.ts                Ollama adapter
    skill/
      prompt.ts                Skill prompt loader + prompt builders
    views/
      GardenSidebar.ts         Sidebar ItemView
      TriageModal.ts           Triage queue modal
    ui/
      FrontmatterDiff.ts       Diff modal + WikiLink chips
    commands/
      noteCommands.ts          Process + Publish handlers

License

Copyright (C) 2026 karx

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

The source code is available at github.com/karx/kaaroGarden.

Roadmap

• WikiLink validation against real vault files
• Garden Log auto-update after session
• Optional git commit after Stage 3 publish
• Guided one-by-one Process Session mode
• Vault Health Dashboard

License

MIT © karx