If you’ve been using Obsidian for a while, you know how easy it is to spend more time configuring your setup than actually using it. The key is finding that balance. After some real iteration, I’ve landed on something that might be different from what your use to seeing and I want to walk you through it.
The Interface
Both side panes are always open. On the left, I run Notebook Navigator instead of the default file explorer — it combines the folder tree, tag tree, and property views in one pane, with a calendar at the bottom. Click a date and it either opens that daily note or prompts you to create it.
On the right, I keep file properties and a base that shows everything due today. The daily note itself is stripped back — a quote, a few auto-filled properties, and that’s it. Less clutter, more focus.
Custom Plugins
Obsidian has truly become a platform that I can build on. I’ve been building my own plugins using AI-assisted coding, partly because I enjoy it, but mostly because there’s a lot of risk giving an unknown developer access to not just your data but potentially your entire device. Here’s what I’ve built:
- PDF Highlight Extractor — run a hotkey and it pulls every highlight, annotation, and comment from a PDF into a structured note. Deleted highlights get flagged rather than silently removed, and links take you back to the exact location in the PDF.
- TickTick Obsidian Sync — a full two-way sync between Obsidian and TickTick. It pulls everything down on first run (including attachments), lets you write task descriptions in Markdown, and syncs checklists and images back up automatically. Also doubles as a local backup of everything in TickTick.
- WordPress Publisher — write in Obsidian, publish to WordPress. Add a tag, hit upload, done. Images upload once and aren’t duplicated on edits. Tested it live during my walkthrough — post was live in about thirty seconds.
- MindMap Plus — a full mind mapping canvas inside Obsidian with collapsible nodes, embedded notes, YouTube video embeds, and image nodes. Import and export via Markdown, CSV, or HTML.
- Multi-Tools Bundle — a collection of smaller utilities combined into one plugin: an auto-banner inserter for new notes, a highlight tracker with reminders and vault-wide search, a datetime picker, an image inserter from Unsplash, and a tab deduplicator.
Workflow and Vault Structure
My day lives in the daily note. Handwritten notes from digital notebooks like my Boox Note Air 3C and Supernote Manta come in through a file-triggered automation I built, previously n8n workflow, — it watches for new or modified files and runs commands in response, with support for Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and Codex. Voice notes sync in automatically via the VoiceNotes app with audio-to-text transcription included.
The vault itself is pretty flat: Library for most things, daily notes and weekly reviews live in Journals folder, Bases has bases, and Planning (tasks, goals, habits, projects) as the main separations. Tags follow a simple hierarchy — areas, people, places, status, topics, types — visible right in the Notebook Navigator sidebar.
AI works well with all of this since everything is plain text. No conversion needed. Claude, Gemini, and Codex can consume it directly when and if I choose too.
Wrapping Up
The through-line here is ownership which is a core premise of Obsidian — plain text files, local-first thinking, customization and now self-built tools(plugins). The setup works because it’s built around how I actually work and changes with me. Now, if there’s something natively missing that I need, I see if I can build it.
If any of this sparked ideas for your own setup, drop a comment. And if you want a deeper look at any of these tools, let me know — there’s a lot more to show.
Watch the full video here:
