Refero

Track everything you read, watch, and learn from right inside your Obsidian notes.

Refero turns the links scattered across your vault into a reading list you can manage. Every reference gets a type, a status, tags, and a rating. You can see all of them at once in a vault-wide map.

Why Refero?

You save a paper, a YouTube talk, and a GitHub repo, and a month later you can't remember which ones you finished, which ones were worth it, or which note you put them in.

Refero solves this without leaving Obsidian:

• Capture in seconds. Copy a URL and run one command. Refero fills in the link from your clipboard and works out whether it's a paper, video, repo, or something else.
• Know where you stand. Move each reference from Saved to In Progress to Completed with a single command. Completion dates are recorded for you.
• See the whole picture. The Reference Map lists every reference in your vault, and you can filter it by type, status, tag, rating, or date.
• Your data stays plain Markdown. References are ordinary lines in your notes. There's no database, no lock-in, and they're readable without the plugin.

Installation

Click here to install Refero in Obsidian, then click Install and Enable.

Or, inside Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins → Browse and search for Refero.

How do I use it?

1. Set up hotkeys (recommended)

Refero is built to be used from the keyboard. With a hotkey, you can capture a reference in a few seconds without touching the mouse.

Go to Settings → Hotkeys, search for Refero, and assign keys to the commands you'll use most. For example:

Pick any keys you like. If a combination is already taken, Obsidian will tell you.

2. Capture a reference

1. Copy a URL.
2. Press your Add reference hotkey. The URL and type are already filled in.
3. Add a title, status, tags, and rating, then press Enter to save.

Refero adds a ## References section to the note (if it doesn't have one yet) and appends:

### [Attention Is All You Need](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762)
📄 Paper | 🔄 **In Progress** | ★★★★★ | #ml #transformers | 📅 2026-06-08

3. Keep it up to date

Put your cursor on a reference and use Cycle reference status to move it along, from Saved to In Progress to Completed. Edit, delete, and open URL work the same way on the reference under your cursor.

4. Review everything

Open the Reference map to see every reference in your vault, then filter by status to find what's still unfinished.

Keyboard shortcuts in the capture window

Every field in the capture window works with the keyboard:

No hotkeys? Every command is also available from the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P). Type "Refero" to see them all.

Features

Capture

• Clipboard capture: the URL field is pre-filled from your clipboard
• Type auto-detection: GitHub → Repository, YouTube → Video, arXiv → Paper, Spotify → Podcast, Reddit/HN → Thread, Kaggle → Dataset, and more
• Note autocomplete: link to other notes in your vault with the Obsidian Note type
• Automatic dates: the capture date is stamped on save, and the completion date is added when the status reaches Completed

Organize

• 13 reference types, grouped into Written, Media, Technical, and Other
• 7 statuses covering a full reading workflow, with a built-in status guide
• Inline tags and 1–5 star ratings
• Edit, delete, or cycle status for the reference under your cursor

Browse

• Reference Map: a persistent tab showing every reference in the vault, with live filters and sorting
• Tag browser: click a tag to see every matching reference across the vault
• Open URL: open the link under your cursor in the browser from the command palette

Stay consistent

• Auto-rename: when you rename or move a note, Refero updates every reference that points to it
• Broken link warnings: you're notified when you save a reference to a note that doesn't exist
• Find broken references: scan the whole vault for links to notes that no longer exist

Commands

Reference Map

The Reference Map collects every reference from every note into one view.

• Filter live by type, status, tag (partial match), minimum rating, and date added
• Sort by date added, rating, title, note name, or status, in ascending or descending order
• Navigate: click a title to open its URL or note, or click the source note to jump to it
• Click ↻ Refresh to re-scan after editing

Reference types and statuses

### [[Note Name]]
📎 Obsidian Note | 🔄 **In Progress** | ★★★☆☆ | #ml #attention | 📅 2026-06-08

### [Title](https://example.com)
🌐 Web Page | ✅ **Completed** | ★★★★★ | 📅 2026-01-15 | ✔ 2026-03-20

Development

npm install
npm run build   # compiles main.ts → main.js

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome in Issues.

License

MIT