Lore Graph

Hide whole folders from Obsidian's graph view and reveal their notes on demand, by clicking a related node. Ideal for "second brain" vaults that accumulate many daily notes (journal/, inbox/, archive/) — the graph stays readable while keeping contextual backlinks one click away.

Status: early development (v0.1.0). The plugin hooks undocumented internal APIs of Obsidian's graph renderer, so it may break between Obsidian versions. All such access is isolated in a single adapter (src/rendererAdapter.ts) to make those breakages easy to fix.

Why

A real "second brain" graph drowns in daily notes and topic notes — every node is connected to everything, and the view becomes noise:

Lore Graph hides the noisy folders, leaving only your evergreen people/projects/MOCs — a graph you can actually read:

Reveal on demand

Hover or click a node and its hidden journal entries and topics fan out around it, highlighted — while the rest of the graph dims. Click again to open the note; click empty space to reset.

Behavior

• Initial state: notes inside the folders listed in Settings → Lore Graph → "Hidden folders" are hidden from the graph (their nodes are faded out and made non-interactive).
• Hover a visible node → its linked hidden notes fade in around it (ephemeral preview).
• First click on a node → pins the reveal (it stays shown, highlighted like the native selection).
• Click a revealed hidden node → cascade: it becomes the new center and reveals its own hidden links (excluding nodes already shown in the session).
• Second click on the pinned node → opens the note in the active tab.
• Click empty space → resets the reveal session.

Settings

• Enable feature — global toggle.
• Hidden folders — list of folder paths to hide (default: journal/).
• Max nodes shown — hard cap on the number of nodes revealed per click (default: 20).

Install

Until it is available in the community plugins list, install manually:

1. Build (npm install && npm run build) or download a release.
2. Copy main.js, manifest.json and styles.css into your vault under <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/lore-graph/.
3. Enable Lore Graph in Settings → Community plugins.

How it works

Lore Graph never removes nodes from the graph — it keeps their force-directed positions and edges, and only toggles their PIXI alpha/renderable (visibility) and eventMode (interactivity). Revealed nodes are rendered natively by Obsidian (same look as a native hover/selection).

main.ts                  → LoreGraphPlugin (entry point, settings)
src/
  ├── graphHook.ts       → attaches/detaches per graph view on layout-change
  ├── rendererAdapter.ts → the single place that touches Obsidian's private renderer API
  ├── rendererPatcher.ts → owns the renderer overrides, hover listeners, rAF loop
  ├── revealManager.ts   → reveal/cascade logic + smooth fade
  ├── settings.ts        → settings + validation
  └── i18n.ts            → EN/FR strings (auto-detected from Obsidian's locale)

Development

npm install
npm run dev    # esbuild watch mode
npm run build  # typecheck + production bundle (main.js)
npm test       # unit tests (Vitest)

This plugin makes no network requests, requires no account, and reads no files outside the vault.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.