Relation Sync

Relation Sync is a powerful Obsidian plugin that automates the management of bidirectional relationships within your vault's YAML frontmatter. Stop manually updating back-references; define your logic once and let the plugin handle the rest.

✨ Key Features

• 🔄 Automatic Bidirectional Syncing: Add a relation in one note, and the inverse is instantly added to the target note.
• 📚 Extensive Default Library: Over 50+ pre-configured relation pairs covering Family, Romantic, Professional, and Creative relationships.
• 🌍 Multi-Language Support: Fully localized in 8 languages (English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese).
• 🛠️ Fully Customizable: Define your own custom relation pairs (e.g., Villain ↔ Hero, Master ↔ Apprentice).
• 📂 Multi-Value Aware: Handles both single links and arrays of links seamlessly.
• ⚡ Bulk Sync Tool: A specialized tool to scan and synchronize your entire vault in one click.
• 🎨 Modern Settings UI: Grouped, searchable, and filterable interface for effortless configuration.

🚀 How It Works

Imagine you are writing about your family. You add a link to your father in your note:

John Doe.md:
---
father: [[David Doe]]
---

Relation Sync will immediately detect this and update David's note:

David Doe.md:
---
child: [[John Doe]]
---

If you later change or remove the link, the plugin updates the corresponding inverse relation automatically, ensuring your graph remains perfectly consistent.

🛡️ Safe First Run

Relation Sync writes to YAML frontmatter, so start conservatively:

1. Back up or version your vault before the first global sync.
2. Open Settings → Relation Sync and confirm Automatic sync is enabled only when you are ready.
3. Review the enabled relation pairs for your language. Other bundled language packs are installed but disabled by default.
4. Use Sync entire vault to preview planned changes before writing.
5. After any sync, open Recent sync log to inspect what changed. If the latest sync batch was not what you expected, use Undo last sync before making more sync changes.

Automatic sync can be paused at any time. When paused, the plugin continues tracking note metadata but does not write inverse relations.

🧾 Supported Frontmatter

Relation fields can be single wiki links:

---
parent of: [[Alice]]
---

Or arrays of wiki links:

---
parent of:
  - [[Alice]]
  - [[Bob|Bobby]]
---

Relation Sync resolves standard Obsidian wiki links, including aliases, headings, basename links, and path-qualified links. Non-string values in relation arrays are preserved, but only wiki-link strings are treated as relation targets.

⚙️ Configuration

• Relation pairs define the forward and inverse YAML keys. For example, parent of maps to child of.
• Automatic sync controls live writes after note edits and renames.
• Recent sync log shows recent automatic and bulk writes.
• Undo last sync reverses the latest Relation Sync write batch.
• Exclude paths accepts comma-separated vault paths such as Templates, Archive/old.
• Language packs are visible in settings. Only the current Obsidian language's non-conflicting default pairs are enabled by default; other bundled languages are available but disabled.
• Import/export lets you move relation-pair presets between vaults. Imported duplicate pairs are skipped.

If enabled relation pairs contain empty fields, exact duplicates, or conflicting mappings, automatic relation writes are disabled until the configuration is fixed.

📂 Supported Categories

The plugin comes with a rich set of defaults grouped by category:

🔎 Relations Panel

Use the ribbon icon or command palette action Open relations panel to see configured relations for the active note. The panel groups related notes, shows the relation keys that connect them, and opens target notes directly.

⚠️ Limitations

• Relation targets must already resolve to existing Markdown notes. The plugin does not create missing target notes.
• Sync is based on frontmatter wiki links, not inline body links.
• The undo action only reverses the latest Relation Sync write batch kept in memory during the current plugin session.
• Some bundled relation variants are intentionally disabled by default when enabling all of them would make a YAML key ambiguous.
• Bulk sync and rename handling scan Markdown files in the vault; large vaults should use the preview, progress, and cancel controls.

⚙️ Installation

Community Plugins (Recommended)

1. Open Settings in Obsidian.
2. Go to Community plugins and click Browse.
3. Search for Relation Sync.
4. Click Install, then Enable.

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the Releases page.
2. Create a folder named relation-sync in your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory.
3. Move the downloaded files into that folder.
4. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin in settings.

🛠️ Development

If you want to build the plugin yourself or contribute:

1. Clone the repository.
2. Run npm install to install dependencies.
3. Run npm run dev to start the build process in watch mode.
4. Run npm run build for a production release.

Verification Matrix

Before changing sync behavior, verify:

• single relation value
• multiple relation values
• removing a relation
• renamed or moved target notes
• reciprocal relation pairs
• excluded folders/files
• missing target frontmatter
• bulk sync preview and cancellation

🤝 Contributing & Support

• Bugs & Features: Please open an issue on the GitHub repository.
• Localization: If you'd like to help translate the plugin into more languages, contributions to the src/locales directory are welcome!
• Support: If you find this plugin useful, consider supporting development.

Developed with ❤️ by casungo