Tag and Tally

A plugin for Obsidian that adds support for Tag and Tally games — a rules-light tabletop RPG system. The plugin provides in-vault tools for running sessions: dice rolling and resolution, an in-vault rulebook with search, NPC generation, card decks, and lookup tables.

Features

• Resolution roller — inline rolls with full Tag and Tally resolution mechanics (advantage, disadvantage, tag bonuses, qualifiers).
• Rulebook — the complete Tag and Tally rulebook bundled with the plugin, searchable from the sidebar.
• Tables and decks — built-in random tables and card decks for prep and improv at the table.
• NPC generator — procedurally generates NPC appearance, traits, and hooks.
• Dice roller — standard polyhedral dice with quick presets.
• Sidebar panel — keeps tools and references within one click while you write or run a session.
• AI assistant (optional, bring-your-own model) — an opt-in chat sidebar for prep and at-the-table help. Off by default and does nothing until you point it at your own local model server (see below).

Installation

From the Obsidian community plugin directory

Once approved, the plugin will be available under Settings → Community plugins → Browse → "Tag and Tally".

Manual installation

1. Download manifest.json, main.js, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Copy them into <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/tag-and-tally/ (create the folder if needed).
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Tag and Tally under Settings → Community plugins.

Usage

After enabling the plugin, open the Tag and Tally sidebar from the ribbon icon. The rulebook is browsable from the Rulebook tab and searchable via the /docs command in a chat-style input.

For inline dice resolution, use the resolution syntax described in the in-vault rulebook (Resolution chapter).

AI assistant (optional)

Tag and Tally ships with an optional AI chat sidebar that can help with prep, lookups, and improv at the table. It is not active out of the box and the plugin does not bundle or download any AI model.

To enable it, you provide your own local model:

1. Install a local OpenAI-compatible model server such as LM Studio (other servers that expose the OpenAI chat-completions API also work).
2. Download an open-weights model into that server. The plugin has been developed against Gemma-class local models (the default model name in settings is google/gemma-4-26b-a4b), but any compatible chat model will work.
3. Start the local server. By default the plugin expects http://127.0.0.1:1234/v1; change the URL in Settings → Tag and Tally → AI to match wherever you are running it.

Until those steps are completed, the AI sidebar simply has nothing to talk to and will remain idle. The plugin never sends AI requests to any remote service — all chat traffic goes to the local URL you configure.

You also choose how much of your vault the AI is allowed to see, via AI settings → Access mode:

• Whole vault — the AI's search and @mention tools may look at any markdown file.
• Specific folders — restrict access to one or more folders you pick.
• Specific files — restrict access to an explicit list of files.

Inline AI commands

Besides the chat sidebar, you can run the AI from inside any note by dropping in a short inline code span and letting it resolve in place. When the marker scrolls into view in Live Preview, the plugin runs it against your local model, shows an "AI generating…" pill while it works, and then replaces the marker with an > [!ai] callout holding the result. Like the sidebar, these stay inert until you have configured a local model.

• Summary (ai:summary) — drop ai:summary after a stretch of notes to get a quick bulleted recap of everything above the marker. The reply is inserted as a Summary callout.
• Eval (ai:eval) — put ai:eval below a dice/resolution block to turn the mechanical outcome into prose. It finds the last resolution block before the marker and narrates what happens in the fiction. The reply is inserted as an Evaluation callout.
• Ask (ai:ask) — write a question as a normal paragraph, then put ai:ask as an inline code span on the line below it. The paragraph directly above the marker is treated as the question and the rest of the note is sent along as context, so the answer is grounded in what you have already written. The reply is inserted as an Answer callout. You can append a saved GM personality by name — e.g. ai:ask:Guildmaster — to colour the tone.
• Rule (ai:rule) — put ai:rule below a rules question to answer it from the bundled Tag and Tally rulebook rather than from your note. The plugin fuzzy-searches the rulebook for the pages most relevant to your question, answers only from those pages (and cites the section), and reproduces any game-sentence templates word-for-word. The reply is inserted as a Rule callout.

All four commands run through the same local model and access rules as the chat sidebar, and any of them will fold in a character summary when the note's frontmatter has a character key. You can tailor the length and tone of each reply by creating a prompt note and pointing the matching setting at it — AI settings → Summary prompt filename (default summary), Eval prompt filename (default eval), Ask prompt filename (default ask), and Rule prompt filename (default rule).

Permissions and privacy

The plugin reuses Obsidian's vault API for all file access and stays within the rules an Obsidian community plugin is expected to follow. A few specifics that may show up in plugin reviews or security scans:

• Vault file enumeration. The plugin lists markdown files in your vault for three things:
  • the AI assistant's @mention autocomplete, vault search, and folder-listing tools (all gated by the Access mode you choose, and inert until you configure a local model);
  • the Travel map feature, which finds notes carrying a mapId in their frontmatter so it can plot them;
  • the sidebar's note-picker modal, which lets you choose a markdown file to display.
• Clipboard write. The plugin only writes to the system clipboard, and only when you explicitly click a copy action: copying an AI code block, copying a Travel-map location as markdown, or copying a dice/resolution result or random-table row from the Documentation and Tables UI so you can paste it into your notes. The plugin never reads the clipboard.
• No filesystem access outside the vault. All file I/O goes through Obsidian's vault API — the plugin does not use Node's fs module or any other path that would reach outside your vault.
• No remote network calls for AI. AI requests are sent only to the local URL you configure in AI settings. If that URL points to 127.0.0.1 / localhost (the default), traffic never leaves your machine.
• Local persistence. Plugin data is stored with Obsidian's built-in loadData() / saveData() API, not localStorage or sessionStorage.

Compatibility

Requires Obsidian 1.4.0 or newer. Works on desktop and mobile.

License

MIT — copyright (c) 2026 Alicia Wilkerson.