Sources
Obsidian
Your Obsidian vaults become part of your unified knowledge timeline.

What It Does
The Obsidian source indexes all Markdown files in a vault. Your notes are summarized, tagged, and made searchable alongside everything else in pinakea. Changes sync automatically — edit a note in Obsidian, and pinakea updates within seconds.
Sources are configured per Set. If you use multiple Sets, add each vault to the Set you want it to belong to. See Sets (Libraries).
Key Features
Clean Text Extraction
pinakea reads your Markdown files and extracts clean text for AI processing. YAML frontmatter is parsed separately — your tags and aliases are preserved and used, but the raw YAML block doesn’t clutter summaries or search results.
Frontmatter Support
If your notes have frontmatter, pinakea uses it:
- Title from
title:field (falls back to first heading or filename) - Tags from
tags:field (merged with AI-suggested tags) - Aliases are recognized for search
Real-Time Sync
pinakea watches your vault for changes. Create a new note, edit an existing one, or reorganize your folder structure — updates appear in your timeline automatically.
Deep Links
Click any Obsidian item in pinakea to open the original note. The link uses obsidian:// URLs, so it works even if your vault has moved.
Companion Plugin
pinakea includes an optional Obsidian plugin that enables bidirectional linking.
What It Does
- Open in pinakea App — jump from a note in Obsidian directly to its pinakea entry
- Chat in pinakea App — start a new chat conversation about the current note
- Status indicator — shows whether the current vault is connected to pinakea
Installation
- Install and enable the BRAT plugin in Obsidian.
- In BRAT, choose Add beta plugin.
- Enter
myfineapps/pinakea-obsidian-companion. - Install/update the plugin via BRAT.
- Enable pinakea Companion in Obsidian’s Community Plugins settings.
Manual fallback:
- Download
main.js,manifest.json, andstyles.cssfrom the plugin releases. - Place them in
<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/pinakea-obsidian-companion/.
The plugin reads pinakea’s local database to match notes. No network access is required.
Setup
- Go to Settings → Sources
- Click Add Source and choose Obsidian
- Select your vault folder
- pinakea begins indexing
Tips
- You can add multiple vaults as separate sources
- Only
.mdfiles are indexed (other file types in the vault are ignored) - Hidden files and folders (starting with
.) are skipped - Large vaults with thousands of notes may take a few minutes on first scan