Link Unlinked Mentions

Scans the active note for plain-text mentions of other notes' titles and aliases, then converts them to wikilinks in one click.

Warning: This operation modifies the active note in-place. It is irreversible without a vault backup. Back up your vault before using this plugin.

What it does

When invoked on a note, the plugin:

1. Enumerates every other markdown file in the vault and collects their basenames and aliases from frontmatter.
2. Scans the active note for whole-word, case-insensitive matches of those terms — skipping code blocks, inline code, math, existing wikilinks, markdown links, HTML comments, tags, and YAML frontmatter.
3. Shows a dry-run preview in a modal (with surrounding context for each match) and lists any terms that were skipped because they matched multiple notes ambiguously.
4. On confirmation, rewrites matching text as [[Target Note]] (exact case) or [[Target Note|matched text]] (alias or differing case).

Features

• Inverted scope — operates on the active note, not the vault. Use it to clean up a specific note.
• Ambiguity detection — if two notes share the same term, that term is skipped and reported, not guessed.
• Longest-match preference — Internal Validity beats Validity at the same position.
• Alias support — reads all three frontmatter forms (bare string, block array, flow array).
• Performance — single combined alternation regex; large spans are chunked at newline boundaries.
• Unicode-aware — word boundaries use \p{L} lookarounds, not \b, so Café and similar terms match correctly.

Build

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• npm

Commands

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Development build (watch mode)
npm run dev

# Production build
npm run build

# Run tests
npm test

The production build outputs main.js in the project root.

Install in Obsidian

https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/link-unlinked-mentions

Manual Installation

1. Run npm run build to produce main.js.
2. In your vault, create the folder:

   <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/link-unlinked-mentions/
   

3. Copy these three files into that folder:
   • main.js
   • manifest.json
   • styles.css
4. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → Enable Link Unlinked Mentions.

Usage

1. Open the note you want to enrich with links.
2. Open the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P) and run "Link mentions of other notes in current note", or click the link icon in the left ribbon.
3. Review the dry-run preview — matches are listed with context; ambiguous terms appear in a separate section.
4. Click "Link N mentions" to apply, or Cancel to abort.

A notice confirms how many mentions were linked.

Skip zones

The following regions in the active note are never modified:

Alias support

Aliases are read from frontmatter via Obsidian's metadata cache. All three forms are recognised:

# Bare string
aliases: My Alias

# Block array
aliases:
  - My Alias
  - Another Alias

# Flow array
aliases: [My Alias, Another Alias]

Development

Tests live in src/matcher.test.ts and use Vitest. The src/matcher.ts module has no Obsidian imports and runs entirely in Node.js.