YAML Editor

Edit YAML in Obsidian with an editor that understands its structure: completions learned from your vault, structure-aware indenting and restructuring, folding, and a rendered view that turns a YAML file into a readable report. It never reformats your text: key order, comments and whitespace stay as you wrote them.

It works in note frontmatter, ```yaml code blocks, and standalone .yaml / .yml files, which Obsidian normally hides and this plugin opens in their own editor.

Features

Completions. As you type a key, the plugin suggests keys used at the same path elsewhere in your vault, ranked by how often they appear, with example values. Optional JSON Schemas add authoritative keys, descriptions and allowed values.

Snippets and the palette. Common fields (tags, aliases, dates, Dataview stubs, list and map skeletons) appear in autocomplete with tab stops. YAML: Insert element here… opens a searchable palette for the cursor's position. You can add your own snippets in settings.

Structural editing. Enter continues lists and indents after a key:. Tab and Shift+Tab move a key or list item together with everything under it; Shift+Tab places the node after its parent, so the siblings below it stay put. Alt+↑ / Alt+↓ swap a node with its neighbour, comments included. You can also sort keys at a level, convert a value to a list, a list to a map, or a map to a list of maps. These are in the command palette and the right-click menu. Edits that shouldn't change your data are checked, and refused if they would.

Rendered view. In a standalone .yaml file, the book icon in the header switches to a read-only report: headings, tables and paragraphs laid out from the shape of the data, in your theme's colours, with vault paths you can click. The pencil switches back. An optional _view: block in the file controls the title, section order, labels and summary tables; files with one open rendered by default. YAML: Render to HTML file saves a static copy next to the YAML that pastes cleanly into Word or Google Docs. See RENDER.md for the _view options.

Orientation. Folding that's remembered per file, even after edits, a status-bar breadcrumb (project › milestones[2] › title), index markers on list items, Go to key… by dotted path, and quiet parse-error markers. It reports parse errors only and isn't a style linter.

Smaller tools. Toggle minimal quoting on a value, add and reference anchors, insert today's date, and insert a frontmatter block.

Keys

Inside YAML:

Every command is in the palette under "YAML:" and can be given a hotkey in Settings → Hotkeys.

JSON Schemas

The plugin works without any setup, learning from your vault. For fields you want to standardize, put a JSON Schema file in the schema folder (default yaml-schemas/ inside your vault's .obsidian folder; configurable in settings) and opt in with a top-level _schema: book key, or # yaml-schema: book in a code block. book is the file name or the schema's $id.

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "title": { "type": "string", "description": "Book title" },
    "status": { "enum": ["unread", "reading", "finished"] }
  }
}

Schema keys are suggested first, with their descriptions, and enum values are offered as completions. Local $refs are followed; remote ones aren't. Run YAML: Reload schemas after editing a schema file.

Settings

Schema folder, open reports in rendered view, gutter icons, ghost-text hints, path breadcrumbs, aligned wrapped lines, and your own snippets.

Installing

Install YAML Editor from Settings → Community plugins. Requires Obsidian 1.5.0 or later; works on desktop and mobile (the breadcrumb is desktop-only).

To build it yourself, see CLAUDE.md for the commands and SPEC.md for the design and non-goals.

Support

If the plugin saves you time, you can buy me a coffee.

License

MIT