Knowledge Overview

Knowledge Overview is an Obsidian plugin that uses OpenAI-compatible LLM providers to generate structured subject overviews, study outlines, and chapter notes for background learning, course review, and research preparation.

Features

• Generate a course outline from a subject name.
• Generate one Markdown note per outline chapter.
• Start generation from the command palette or the ribbon icon.
• Resume failed chapters from Failed_Chapters.md without regenerating the entire outline.
• Use learning-oriented prompts for concept explanations, formulas, examples, applications, and common misunderstandings.
• Choose from common European and Asian output languages.
• Include English plus target-language terminology for key concepts.
• Render formulas with Obsidian-compatible KaTeX blocks.
• Configure API base URL, models, and manual concurrency.
• Show generation progress in the status bar and an updateable notice for mobile.
• Retry transient API failures and write failed chapters to Failed_Chapters.md.

Requirements

• Obsidian 1.12.7 or later.
• An API key for Google Gemini, OpenAI, or another OpenAI-compatible provider.

The plugin is not desktop-only. It avoids Electron and Node-only APIs and is intended to run on both desktop and mobile Obsidian. Mobile network behavior still depends on the configured provider and the device network environment.

Installation

Manual Install

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.

2. Create this folder in your vault:

   <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/knowledge-overview/
   

3. Copy the three files into that folder.

4. Reload Obsidian.

5. Enable Knowledge Overview in Settings > Community plugins.

From Source

git clone <repository-url>
cd obsidian-knowledge-plugin
npm install
npm run build

Then copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into:

<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/knowledge-overview/

Usage

1. Open the command palette.
2. Run Generate Knowledge Overview.
3. Enter a subject, for example Signal Processing.
4. The plugin creates a subject folder containing Outlines.md and one note per generated chapter.

To continue failed chapters later, run Resume Failed Chapter Generation from the command palette or the resume ribbon icon, then enter the subject folder name. The plugin reads Failed_Chapters.md and retries only those chapters.

Example output:

Signal Processing/
├── Outlines.md
├── 01_Fourier_Analysis.md
├── 02_Signal_Filtering.md
└── 03_Wavelet_Transform.md

Demo

Settings

• API Key: API key for your provider.
• API Base URL: OpenAI-compatible API endpoint. Default: https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai.
• Outline Model: model used for outline generation. Default: gemini-2.5-flash.
• Chapter Model: model used for chapter notes. Default: gemini-2.5-flash.
• Concurrency: manual course-level concurrency, default 1.
• Chapter Concurrency: manual chapter-generation concurrency, default 1.
• Language: target output language.

The default settings favor stability on free or rate-limited providers. Keep concurrency small unless your provider is stable under parallel requests and has sufficient rate limits.

Medium-sized or stronger models usually generate richer chapter notes than small or lite models. Very small models may follow the structure but produce shorter explanations.

If the network is unstable, transient provider errors are retried automatically. Any chapters that still fail are listed in Failed_Chapters.md inside the generated subject folder.

Supported Languages

The plugin currently provides presets for English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Malay, Hindi, Arabic, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Turkish, and Russian.

API Providers

The plugin calls the /chat/completions endpoint and should work with Google Gemini's OpenAI-compatible endpoint, OpenAI, and other OpenAI-compatible providers. Provider quality, latency, context limits, and rate limits directly affect generation quality and stability.

Privacy and Security

API keys are stored locally in Obsidian plugin data inside your vault. Do not publish plugin data files or screenshots containing secrets.

The plugin sends the subject name and generated chapter prompts to the API provider you configure. It does not include analytics, telemetry, remote code loading, shell execution, eval, or bundled API keys.

Generated Markdown files are written only to your current vault.

Development

npm install
npm run dev

Build a production bundle:

npm run build

Release artifacts are:

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

Project Structure

.
├── main.ts
├── main.js
├── manifest.json
├── versions.json
├── styles.css
├── esbuild.config.mjs
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json

License

MIT