Single File Section Cards

An Obsidian plugin that shows the sections of one note as a wall of cards — one card per heading — and lets you edit any section in place, writing straight back to the source .md file. With the freeform Custom Grid canvas, it doubles as a home for ad hoc dashboards, sticky notes, task management, and brainstorming — all stored as plain markdown in a single note.

While this is a standalone plugin that works on any note, it pairs nicely with Single File Daily Notes. That plugin keeps all your daily notes in a single file, one ### YYYY-MM-DD heading per day. This plugin turns those headings into a card wall you can scan, sort, and tick off.

Install it from the Obsidian community plugin directory →

What it does

• One card per heading. Pick which level becomes a card (H1–H6); deeper headings stay nested inside their parent card. Six layouts — including a freeform Custom Grid canvas — three sort orders (A→Z, Z→A, document), today's card highlighted when headings are dates — and every note remembers its own view.
• Work directly on the cards. Click a card to edit its raw markdown (Ctrl/⌘+Enter saves, Esc cancels, Tab indents), tick task checkboxes — with optional ✅ 2026-08-06 done dates — create a new card pre-filled with today's date, or delete one after a confirmation.
• Pin and quick add. The pin button keeps a card at the top regardless of sort order, in every layout and view of that note — and by default the pinned band stays on screen while the rest scrolls (beside the row in Vertical). The + button pops a text box that appends what you type to the bottom of the section (or the top), without opening the editor.
• Drag and drop. Reorder cards in Document order, or drag a task or paragraph onto another card in any view — a task brings its sub-items along.
• Navigate as cards. Wikilinks switch the tab to the linked note's card wall, ↗ opens the section in a normal editor, the four-arrow button blows a card up over the others, and you can open as many cards tabs as you like — including several of the same note.
• Writes are surgical. Only the touched section's lines change, and every write re-locates its section by content first, so a stale card refuses rather than touching the wrong lines.

Layouts

Vertical

Full-height cards side by side. The row scrolls sideways, and the mouse wheel pans it from anywhere in the view — over the cards or over the toolbar. A card whose content overflows keeps the wheel until it reaches its end.

Custom Grid

A freeform canvas. Every section starts as a heading-only tile in the column on the right — drag one onto the dot-patterned canvas and it becomes a full card you can place anywhere, move by its title bar, and resize by its corner grip. Cards snap to the dot grid (a dashed preview shows where a drag or resize will land, amber when the no-overlap rule will nudge it), and may never overlap or touch. The ✕ in a card's corner — or dragging it onto the column — returns it to the list.

The right column keeps permanent controls: Clear Layout (with confirmation) returns every card to the list, the A→Z / Z→A / Doc buttons re-sort the sections, and today's heading is highlighted. Zoom controls in the canvas's bottom-left go from 40% to 160%; scroll bars run in every direction and middle-click drag pans. Placements and zoom are remembered per note in the plugin's data — never in your notes.

Grid

Masonry columns: every card takes only the height it needs, so a short card never leaves dead space beneath it.

Grid Aligned

A uniform grid — every row starts at the same height, with a rule between rows.

Tight

The same masonry packing, denser: narrower columns, smaller gaps and type. Roughly half the scroll height of Grid on the same note.

Horizontal

One card per row, full pane width.

Pinned cards

Every card's title bar has a pin button. Pinning pulls the card into a pinned section at the top of the wall, regardless of the sort order — within the pinned section and below it, cards still follow the current sort. Pins are remembered per note, so they hold across every layout, every open view of that note, and restarts. Click the pin again to unpin.

With Keep pinned cards on screen (on by default), the pinned section doesn't scroll away:

• Grid, Grid Aligned, Tight, Horizontal — the pinned cards sit in a band that sticks just below the toolbar while the rest of the cards scroll beneath it.
• Vertical — the pinned cards form a static column on the left, scrolling on its own if it outgrows the pane, while the card row scrolls sideways next to it.
• Custom Grid — not applied; cards on the canvas stay exactly where you placed them.

With the setting off, the pinned section still leads the wall but scrolls with it, separated by a divider. Pins are keyed to the heading line, so renaming a section unpins it.

Usage

• Click the deck-of-cards icon in the ribbon, or run one of the commands:
  • Single File Section Cards: Open section cards (default note)
  • Single File Section Cards: Open section cards for the active note
  • Single File Section Cards: Create new card
• The toolbar button switches notes: your default note, notes you've viewed as cards, and recently opened notes are suggested; any other note can be reached by typing its name or path. (The plugin deliberately never enumerates the vault.)

Settings

Install

From the community plugin directory (recommended)

The plugin is listed in the Obsidian community plugin directory: in Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Single File Section Cards, install, and enable. Updates arrive through Obsidian's normal plugin updater.

With BRAT (pre-release versions)

To track releases straight from this repository — useful for trying fixes before they reach the directory — add jordanlong121/singlefilesectioncards as a beta plugin in BRAT.

Manually

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release (or build them, below).
2. Put them in <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/single-file-section-cards/.
3. Reload Obsidian, then enable Single File Section Cards in Settings → Community plugins.

Sample vault

sample-vault/ is a small flat vault you can open in Obsidian to try the plugin:

• Daily Notes 2026.md — a single-file daily notes file in the format Single File Daily Notes produces (## MMMM YYYY months, ### YYYY-MM-DD, dddd days), with generic schedule entries
• Project Notes.md, Meeting Minutes.md, Field Log.md, Handbook.md, Reading List.md — filler notes at different heading depths, for trying the H1–H6 selector

The screenshots above were rendered from that vault with the default Obsidian theme.

FAQ

Is this vibe-coded? Yes!

Will you maintain this? Don't know, but I use it every day so probably.

Are there other plugins like it? I don't know, that's why I wrote it.

Do you need the Single File Daily Notes plugin for this to work? No, but you should use it because it's cool.

License

MIT