✍️ Novel-kit

中文 | English

An all-in-one writing suite for long-form web novels in Obsidian.
One work is one folder in your vault · Settings, outlines and manuscripts are all plain Markdown · Seven views over the same notes.

📖 Full Reference ❓ FAQ

[!IMPORTANT] This plugin is built for the desktop version — desktop only.

✨ Feature Highlights

🏠 Creative Homepage

_{Progress & KPIs · Daily word-count curve and heatmap · Word frequency · Todos · Clock · Drag to add or remove widgets, layout saved to System/home.json}

🕸️ Graph

_{Visualizes relations plus foreshadowing / hooks · "Filter" decides what shows and what gets highlighted · "Display config" handles file types, colors and edges}

📅 Timeline

_{Scenes ordered by time · With "Folder" grouping, dragging really moves files · Edit start/end dates straight in the frontmatter}

🧬 Fission

_{Multi-column card outline · Drag to reorder plot beats · Cards are the notes — you are editing the same files · Right-click to retag the event kind (era / scene / chapter / plot)}

🗺️ Map & Spacetime

_{Coordinate markers on a base image · Spacetime maps the image to a plane and time to the z axis · Coordinates read "map name：x，y" (full-width colon and comma)}

🃏 Cards & Table

_{Cards form a configurable field wall · Table supports grouping, filtering, pinning columns and in-place editing · Both support drag ordering and cross-group drag}

🧵 Foreshadowing · Hooks · Plot · Manuscript

_{The main operation happens in the prose: select a sentence → right click → plant or resolve; state walks through Unplanted → Planted → Linked → Resolved}

📝 Creative Assistants

Inspiration Cards Drag into graph / timeline / fission to become plot beats	Glossary Quick lore lookup, organized in layers	Word Frequency See your habits and repeats at a glance
Proofreading In-place checks, confirm each fix	Writing Goal Daily targets and progress nudges	Naming Generate character and place names by style
File Templates Auto-apply a template and rename by "target folder + filename pattern"	History Snapshots Auto-archived, side-by-side diff before restoring	Sticky Notes Jot things down, auto-saved

🖥️ Desktop

This plugin is desktop only: every feature is designed around desktop interactions (the manifest declares isDesktopOnly).

📥 Installation

Requires Obsidian 1.8.7 or later; desktop only (the plugin uses Node / Electron APIs).

🚀 Quick Start

1. Register a work: open the creative homepage and click "New work", or run the command "Register novel workspace". The folders 设定/, 事件/, 正文/, 灵感/ and System/ are created for you.
2. Try the sample (optional): when no work exists yet, the panel top shows "Load sample", which writes 《残虹夜雨》 — 1 era (北境乱世), 3 scenes and 6 outline sections, 4 manuscript chapters, 14 clues (8 resolved, 6 deliberately left open to demo filtering), one "北境" map with four coordinates, 4 inspiration cards, 2 sticky notes, plus two Chinese walkthrough notes. Following the tour is the fastest way in.
3. Start writing: draft under 正文/, select sentences to plant foreshadowing and hooks; open the main panel (book icon in the ribbon) when you want the whole picture.

❓ FAQ

If a work won't open, it's usually one of three things: it isn't registered (click "New work" first), it isn't selected at the top of the panel, or the 正文/ path is wrong (write under the 正文/ of a registered work).

Notes missing from the graph is usually "Only show connected" hiding nodes with no relations — turn that off, or add a relation; if a whole category is missing, tick its file type under "Filter" or "Display config" in the toolbar.

Markers missing on the map: check that coordinates read "map name：x，y" (full-width colon and comma) and that the map's enabled types include locale. If a timeline edit doesn't stick, change the "开始" / "结束" fields directly in the note's frontmatter.

Word counts not adding up usually means the homepage counts manuscripts in the currently active work — confirm the right work is selected, then refresh.

More Q&A in the reference FAQ.

💾 Data

Settings, outlines and manuscripts are all Markdown notes in your vault. The plugin only maintains two extra things:

• Plugin data.json (.obsidian/plugins/novel-kit/data.json): the work list, the active work, and global settings. Deleting it loses registrations and settings and touches no notes.
• Per-work System/*.json: view layouts, filter rules, homepage templates, todos, sticky notes. Deleting one only resets that slice of view configuration.

🌐 Network use

The plugin works fully offline, collects no telemetry, and never uploads your notes. Only the two features below reach the network, and only when you trigger them yourself — there are no background requests:

Both only download data to your machine (dictionaries are saved to .obsidian/plugins/novel-kit/word-freq-dicts/); nothing of yours is sent out. Word frequency still works without downloading a dictionary — only the built-in stop-word list is available and segmentation is less accurate.

⚖️ Disclosures

• No telemetry: there is no client-side telemetry and no background network requests (network use is limited to the two cases in the previous section).
• Open source: the full source is in this repository, released under the Apache-2.0 License.

🛠️ Development

Requires Node.js 18 or later. npm install, then npm run dev to develop (output goes to test-vault/.obsidian/plugins/novel-kit/), and npm run build for a production bundle in build/.

After making changes:

npm test              # vitest: homepage templates / sample data / style rules
npm run check         # svelte-check type checking
npm run visual:check  # visual regression (run npm run build first)
npm run lint          # Biome

The entry point is src/main.ts; each feature lives in its own src/features/<name>/ folder (manager.ts + appView.ts + settings.ts), and only css-snippets and export are desktop-only. See the reference's development notes.

📄 License & 💬 Feedback

Apache-2.0 License · NOTICE

Third-party components

This plugin bundles and uses the following open-source projects, with thanks (copyright notices retained as their licences require):

Component	Licence	Copyright
three.js	MIT	© 2010–2024 three.js authors
Chart.js	MIT	© 2014–2024 Chart.js Contributors
3d-force-graph	MIT	© Vasco Asturiano
MiniSearch	MIT	© Luca Ongaro
jsdiff	BSD-3-Clause	© 2009–2015 Kevin Decker <[email protected]>
relation-graph	MIT	© seeksdream
CC-CEDICT	CC BY-SA 4.0	© CC-CEDICT project (downloaded on demand, not bundled)

⭐ Star · 🐛 Issues

💗 Support

If you like this plugin and want to support the author to keep updating, you can buy the author a bubble tea here!

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Happy writing! ✍️