Rion Git

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A lightweight Git plugin for Obsidian: review changes in the sidebar, write a commit message, commit, push, pull — and see exactly what changed in any file.

Desktop only. It drives the Git you already have installed.

Features

Interface

Sidebar panel:

Diff view, opened in an editor tab when you click a file:

These previews are rendered from the plugin's real DOM structure and styles.css, using Obsidian's default dark theme colours.

Usage

Open the panel

The panel opens automatically in the right sidebar when Obsidian starts (disable it in settings). If you closed it earlier, any of these reopens it:

• Click the git-branch icon in the ribbon
• Click the status bar item (Git ✓ / Git • 3)
• Run "Rion Git: Open sidebar panel" from the command palette

Commit changes

1. Type a message in the box at the top (leave empty to use the template from settings — default vault backup: <timestamp>)
2. Press Enter or click "✓ Commit"
3. To push right away, use the ⌄ caret and pick "Commit and push"

The message box clears on success while keeping focus, so you can keep going.

Inspect and handle a single file

• Click a file row → opens the diff in a new editor tab, with +N -M in the header
• Hover a file row → two icons appear on the right:
  • ✓ commit only this file (other changes stay uncommitted)
  • ⟳ discard this file's changes (asks for confirmation first; untracked files get deleted)

Browse history

• Click any entry under "History" to expand the list of files it touched
• Click a file there to see that commit's diff for it
• The pill on the right shows where a ref points, e.g. HEAD -> main, origin/main

History stats

Click the 📈 icon at the right end of the "History" header, or run "Rion Git: Open history stats" from the command palette.

• Commit calendar: GitHub-style heatmap, one cell per day, darker means more commits that day (hover for details)
• Trend: two lines aggregated by week — purple is committed lines (left axis), green is committed file count (right axis)
• Range selector in the top right: last 13 / 26 / 52 weeks

Push and pull

Use ⬇ (pull) and ⬆ (push) in the History section header, or the equivalent commands.

The first push sets up tracking automatically via push -u origin <branch>.

Auto-commit

Three mutually exclusive modes:

Either smart threshold can be set to 0 to ignore that dimension; setting both to 0 is the same as off. Line counts include additions and deletions, and untracked new files contribute their own line count.

The ⚡ icon in the panel is a shortcut toggle: highlighted means on, and clicking cycles between "off" and the mode you used last.

Successful auto-commits are silent; only the status bar and panel update.

Status bar

Settings

Settings → Community plugins → Rion Git

Commands

Technical notes

• TypeScript + esbuild, bundled into a single main.js; only obsidian and Node built-ins stay external.
• Drives the system Git through Node's child_process.execFile, with arguments passed as an array and never through a shell — so spaces and non-ASCII characters in paths survive intact. It also means your existing credential helper and SSH keys are reused; the plugin never stores passwords or tokens.
• Layered design: git/exec.ts is the only place that spawns a process, git/ops.ts translates an operation into git commands, and the UI only reads state and expresses intent. Supporting mobile later (via isomorphic-git) would be confined to that seam.
• Serialized queue: Git's index.lock is global, so every call is queued — this is what keeps auto-commit from colliding with a manual push.
• Status parsing: git status --porcelain=v1 -z --untracked-files=all, NUL-delimited, so filenames containing spaces, CJK characters or newlines stay correct.
• Path encoding: every git invocation passes -c core.quotepath=false; otherwise non-ASCII paths come back as octal escapes like \346\225\264.
• UI: both the sidebar panel and the diff view are custom Obsidian ItemViews (not modals), so they can be split, and they survive restarts.
• Refresh strategy: vault modify/create/delete/rename events are debounced (700 ms) and only trigger a status refresh; a 30-second poll covers changes made outside Obsidian. Auto-commits are still driven solely by the timer.

Known limitations

• Desktop only — relies on a local git binary and Node APIs; isDesktopOnly is set in manifest.json.
• Requires Git to be installed, with user.name / user.email configured, or commits will fail.
• Credentials are managed by the system: run a git push in a terminal once to make sure your credential helper or SSH key works.
• Conflicts are detected and reported, but there is no one-click "keep mine / keep theirs" yet.
• No branch switching, merging, or per-hunk staging.
• Binary files and files above 2 MB get no diff preview.
• Avoid keeping the vault on a sync drive (OneDrive, iCloud) while using Git — syncing .git tends to corrupt the repository.

Privacy and network access

• Data stays local. Nothing is sent anywhere by the plugin itself; all repository work is done by the git executable already installed on your machine.
• Network is used only for push, pull, and optional auto-push — and only towards the Git remote you configured. There are no other outbound requests.
• File access is limited to your vault folder: the plugin runs git with the vault as its working directory, and reads untracked files (up to 512 KB each) to preview their contents and count changed lines.
• No telemetry, no accounts, no ads. Credentials are handled by your system Git configuration (credential helper or SSH agent); the plugin never sees or stores them.

License

MIT