The chat-style notes workspace for Obsidian.

Overview

Stashpad is an Obsidian plugin that turns any folder into a chat-style, nestable notes workspace — the feel of jotting in a chat box, backed by a real outliner and plain Markdown files.

It's a homage to Stashpad Notes, a lovely little app discontinued in 2024. This plugin brings its rapid, jot-it-down feeling into Obsidian, on top of your own vault. Everything is stored as ordinary Markdown with YAML frontmatter, so nothing is locked in.

Install & requirements

Stashpad is on the Obsidian community store, so you can install it right from inside Obsidian.

From the community store (recommended)

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse and search for Stashpad (or use the store page).
2. Install, then enable Stashpad.
3. Run "Reveal or open Stashpad" from the command palette (or click the ribbon icon). The first run creates a Stashpad folder.

Via BRAT (optional)

You can also install through BRAT (community page / GitHub): choose Add beta plugin and paste https://github.com/grub-basket/SP. BRAT is handy when you want to pin a specific version — to downgrade if something regresses, or to grab a fix before it reaches the store — instead of waiting on store review.

The core idea

A Stashpad folder is a stream of notes you read bottom-up, where any note can contain more notes.

You write in a composer at the bottom; new notes appear in the list above. Click a note (or press →) to drill in — now what you type nests under it. Press ← to come back out. You can also focus any note to treat it as a temporary root and work entirely within its subtree.

Because the hierarchy is real (each note records its parent), it maps cleanly onto outlines, project breakdowns, and — when you want it — Open Knowledge Format's parent/child structure.

The composer

Deliberately a plain text box — but it does the things that matter for fast capture.

• Type and send. Write, press Enter, the note appears. Shift+Enter for newlines, with an optional split-on-newlines mode that fans one block into several notes at once.
• Inline [[ links and # tags. Start typing [[ to link another note or # to tag, and a popup completes it as you go — quicker and more forgiving than the default editor, because it's built for jotting.
• Attachments, however you like. Click the paperclip, paste an image from the clipboard, or drag and drop files onto the composer. They're imported and linked automatically.
• A tidy button rail. Toggle split mode, set the destination for new notes (so a capture lands exactly where you want), flip whether Enter sends or inserts a newline, attach files, and send. On narrow widths it collapses behind one expander.

Splitting notes

Turn a wall of text into many notes — on capture or after the fact.

With split mode on, a paste becomes multiple notes at once. Right-click the split button to choose how it's broken up: each line, paragraphs (blank-line separated), or headings. Long pastes show a progress bar, are created as one batch, and undo as a single action.

Already have a long note? The Split modal breaks one note into several. Use the "Split by" presets to split into many parts in one click, or place a single divider by line or cursor position. The divider centers in view so you see context above and below it.

Editing & structure

• Edit in Obsidian's editor. Open any note's body in a regular Obsidian tab for the full Markdown editing experience.
• Outliner structure. Notes nest under notes, arbitrarily deep — the same hierarchy OKF turns into parent/child links.
• Everything's a real file. Each note is Markdown with frontmatter (id, parent, created…), so your data stays portable and inspectable.

Navigation & keyboard

Keyboard-first: drill, move, select, reorder, search, and fire commands without the mouse.

There are 50+ bindable actions, all remappable in settings, plus a Stashpad-only command palette. Drill in and out of the tree, focus any note as a temporary root, and jump around with the keyboard.

Search (Sift)

All your tokens, any order, case-insensitive — across one folder or every Stashpad in the vault.

"Sift" is Stashpad's matcher: split your query on spaces and every token must appear somewhere. It powers the search modal, the composer autocomplete, the note/folder pickers, and settings search. Results can open in a new tab.

Panels & sidebars

Dedicated side views for the things you reach for most.

There's also a folder panel listing your Stashpad folders, and a detail panel showing the cursored note's body, metadata, and children.

Organizing

• Move, merge, clone, outdent, drag-and-drop re-parenting, and manual ordering (up / down / top / bottom).
• Per-note colors with friendly color aliases per folder.
• Cross-folder cut / copy / paste of whole subtrees — attachments come along, fully undo/redo-able.
• Pin notes to the sidebar, and swap a note with its parent ("ouroboros").

Tasks & reminders

Turn any note into a to-do.

Toggle a note into a task, set a due date, and get reminders (they fire when Obsidian next opens, scoped to the assignee). Everything with a due date or done state collects in the Tasks panel, grouped by folder.

Open Knowledge Format (OKF)

Export your notes as a portable, spec-compliant bundle that LLMs and agents can actually read.

OKF is Google's open, vendor-neutral spec for packaging curated knowledge as plain Markdown. Stashpad already stores notes as Markdown with frontmatter and a real hierarchy, so it can produce OKF bundles for you — without you hand-authoring any of it.

• One toggle to enable, then opt in per folder (all, some, or none) by assigning an auto-created template.
• Complementary frontmatter (okfType, okfTitle, okfTimestamp + managed okfParent/okfChildren links) added alongside your own fields — nothing of yours is renamed or removed.
• A generated index.md per OKF folder (the table of contents the spec wants), with a legend.
• Multi-format export to .zip / .tar.gz (portable bundles) or .stash. On export, okf* fields map to OKF's standard keys and the hierarchy becomes relative-Markdown links, so the bundle is spec-compliant while your originals stay intact for lossless re-import.
• Stays in sync automatically as you add, move, or delete notes (with a manual Rebuild too).

Import / export

• .stash bundles. Export a subtree (optionally encrypted) and re-import it elsewhere — attachments and all.
• Auto-import dropped files. Drop files into a Stashpad folder: Markdown becomes notes, other files become linked attachments.

Authorship / multiplayer

For vaults shared across people or devices.

Stamp notes with your name. Shared vaults track contributors on top of the original author, with a vault-wide author registry and a "sync authors" command — handy for teams sharing one vault.

Encryption

Optional, off by default — lock notes, folders, or deletes into encrypted files.

Lock a subtree, a folder, or your deletes into encrypted .stashenc files. There are archive folders that auto-encrypt on move-in, a recoverable encrypted trash, and shared-key collaboration (per-device approval or a shared password).

Johnny.Decimal index

Build a JD-style hierarchy from dotted-prefix titles.

From titles like 1.2 Family or animal.duck.yellow Eggs, Stashpad can build a Johnny.Decimal-style index — either a preview in your home note or an actual hierarchy of notes.

Tiny mode

A small, pinnable capture window that floats above everything.

Pop Stashpad out into a compact window you can pin to stay on top, with an opacity slider, so it tucks into a corner for quick capture while you work in other apps.

Templates

Per-folder note templates with keyboard-navigable path autocomplete.

Assign a template per Stashpad folder so every new note starts from a known shape. The path field autocompletes with the arrow keys, Enter, and Tab.

Undo, history & speed

Mobile

Made for phones too.

The layout adapts so you can open Stashpad, see your list of notes, and fire one off in a couple of taps. The composer's button rail collapses to keep the input front and center, and the same drill-in/out flow works by touch.

Settings & keybindings

Tune Stashpad to your workflow.

Settings cover capture behavior, colors, templates, OKF, encryption, authorship, and more — with native settings search on Obsidian 1.13+. Every view-level command can be rebound in Stashpad's own keybindings UI, and plugin-level commands appear in Obsidian's Hotkeys page.

Troubleshooting

Most hiccups are the view getting out of sync with your files — not lost data. Your notes are plain Markdown on disk; reloading rebuilds the view from them.

A note row is blank, or a tab is a "ghost" after an update

Tap the tab to wake it, or do a Reload without saving. Obsidian defers inactive tabs on launch; after a plugin update they can sit blank until touched.

A new version didn't take after BRAT updated the plugin

Reload without saving. Disabling/re-enabling a plugin often leaves the old code cached in the renderer; a full reload picks up the new build reliably.

Styling looks off after an update

Reload — the stylesheet doesn't hot-reload, so a refresh applies the latest styles.

The settings tab is blank, or settings search is missing

Make sure you're on Obsidian 1.13.0+ (desktop or mobile). Stashpad needs 1.13-era APIs; older versions can't run it.

Notes look out of date after editing elsewhere or syncing

Give Obsidian a moment to re-index, or Reload without saving. After external edits (another device, a sync client, the file system) the metadata cache may still be catching up.

OKF fields or index.md didn't update right away

That's expected — the OKF rebuild is debounced a couple of seconds after a change. Use the Rebuild button in the OKF settings to force it immediately.

A keyboard shortcut isn't firing

Stashpad has its own keybindings (Settings → Stashpad) for in-list commands, separate from Obsidian's Hotkeys page (which covers plugin-level commands like open/reveal). Check both if a chord doesn't work.

Still stuck?

Please report it on the issues tab — include your Obsidian version, platform (desktop/mobile), and what you did just before it happened. And remember: it's alpha, so keep backups.

FAQ

Is my data locked into Stashpad?

No. Every note is a plain Markdown file with YAML frontmatter in your own vault. Uninstall and your notes are still just files.

Why does it need Obsidian 1.13+?

Stashpad uses 1.13-era APIs (including settings search). On older versions it can't be installed; update Obsidian to use it.

The OKF frontmatter doesn't look like the spec — is the export still valid?

Yes. Stashpad keeps its fields namespaced (okf*) in your vault so they never clash with your own frontmatter, then maps them to OKF's standard keys on export. In your vault it stays tidy; in the bundle it's by-the-book OKF.

Can I trust the encryption?

It's beta and AI-built, not human-audited. Use it to deter a casual snoop, not to protect anything truly sensitive — and keep unencrypted backups.

Found a bug?

Please report anything buggy or strange on the issues tab.

Credits & license

Stashpad is a homage to Stashpad Notes, discontinued in 2024. Sincere thanks to its founders, Cara and Theo, and the rest of the Stashpad team, for the original that inspired it. The name and spirit are theirs; any rough edges here are not.

Designed and directed by its maintainer; built with Claude Code (Anthropic's Opus models, 4.6–4.8 so far). Licensed MIT © grub-basket.