Inkdown

Write by hand on an iPad; get Markdown in your note.

What lands is plain Markdown: text in your language, maths as LaTeX, drawings as Mermaid or SVG. The ink is not kept.

How to use

The pad also opens from the editor's right-click / long-press menu and the command Handwrite at the cursor.

What it reads

Graphs become an SVG

Diagrams become Mermaid

Mistakes are flagged, never fixed

What you wrote stays as you wrote it; a warning under it says what looks wrong and why.

Two pens: one for your content, one for talking to the AI

What you write with the Pen is your content, and the AI transcribes it. What you write with the AI pen (violet) the AI knows is written to it, so you can annotate the page freely and none of it is mistaken for your content. There are two ways to use it.

Tell it what to do with what you wrote, such as "make this a table", "skip this" or "this symbol is ξ":

Ask a question on the side: write "btw, ..." and the answer comes back in a callout under the result.

Setting up

1. Settings -> Community plugins -> Browse: install and enable Inkdown.
2. In its settings, pick Claude or an OpenAI-compatible service.
3. Under API key: Link... -> Add secret..., and paste your key.

The key stays in Obsidian's keychain on the device, never in the vault. Requires Obsidian 1.11.4 or later.

Privacy and cost

• Only when you tap Convert, one image of the ink and a little of the note around the cursor go to the provider, with your own key.
• With Claude Opus 5.5 a page costs one to three US cents.
• The only clipboard use is a Copy button, shown if you delete a placeholder before its result arrives.

Good to know

• Built for the iPad and Apple Pencil; a mouse works on desktop.
• Recognition is as good as the model, so read what lands.
• With an OpenAI-compatible service, drawings are described in words.
• English and Chinese, following Obsidian's language.

Development notes · MIT license