Disclaimer
Is this plugin open source? No (source available license)
Is this plugin completely free? No (full functionality is free, €5.99 Pro license unlocks a few cosmetic enhancements & dismisses support nudge)
Is this plugin vibe-coded beyond the author’s ability to comprehend how it works? No
Community Directory:https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/liefwork
Hi Everyone,
I would like to humbly present the plugin “Liefwork” for Obsidian.
If, like me, you often get lost searching through your folders in the file explorer, this may be for you.
TLDR:
- Liefwork provides an alternative to the conventional file explorer, replacing folders with branches in a 2D map, enabling better spatial navigation of your files.
- This novel architecture forms the basis of the Liefwork Memory System for those using Obsidian as a second brain for AI agents.
The Basics:
The core of the plugin is a novel algorithm that renders your folders and files as an orderly 2D plant-like structure.
Folders become branches, sub-folders become child branches, and notes and other files become “liefs” on those branches.
The result is a more open map (I use the word “coral”) of your vault than is offered by the conventional folder tree. Zoom out for a bird’s eye view of your vault, and you can immediately see which folders (branches) have lots of deeply nested content and which do not. Zoom in for more detail and to select and open individual notes as normal.
The whole structure expands as elements are added, ensuring it maintains coherence with no overlaps as it scales in any direction.
A larger project at a glance — the deep branches are visible as shape, facilitating navigation.
Nothing is copied or moved - the algorithm merely provides a different view of the same underlying data.
That said - there is one key difference between branches vs folders: through Liefwork, branch tips (or “meristems”) are each given their own notes. This enables the tip of a branch to describe what is beneath it. In the file explorer this translates simply to each folder getting a folder note with the same name. This happens when a branch tip is clicked for the first time in the coral view - a new empty folder/meristem note will be created and opened.
Another result of this is that individual notes can be “promoted” to branches through Liefwork. This means that work can more flexibly progress in any direction.
Use Liefwork either alongside or in place of the file explorer - right clicking any branch (folder) or lief (note or file) provides the same commands as in the file explorer.
Creating a new folder in the explorer view immediately creates a branch in the coral view, because through each you are looking at the same thing.
Install and enable the plugin through Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search Liefwork and you’ll see the deep structure in your vault. (Limits and caveats are listed further down.)
Feedback is most welcome - I’ve been building this thing in the dark for many months and so would love to hear about anything that does or does not work.
But wait, there’s more…
Working with AI agents in Corals - the Liefwork Memory System
The structure of Liefwork corals lends itself to a robust way of working with AI CLI agents like Claude Code or Codex.
This is encoded in the plugin through the Liefwork Memory System.
How it works:
- In the file explorer or Liefwork coral, right click any folder/branch and choose “Seed as coral”.
- This copies a Growth Charter to the folder/branch with rules for AI agents to follow. The user can also enter a Founding Prompt to describe the work to be done, which is also copied on seeding.
- Alongside the Charter it writes short pointer files -
CLAUDE.md,AGENTS.mdandGEMINI.md- which do nothing but tell each agent where the Charter is. The Charter itself is ordinary markdown in your folder: you can read it, and you can change the rules. - When a CLI agent is then opened on a seeded folder or any of its sub-folders, it will automatically read the Growth Charter at the start of the session.
- This prompts the AI to log the session in the coral as prompt-response notes as work unfolds, growing branches under the guidance of the user.
- Towards the end of the session telling the agent to “Roll up” will prompt it to update each Meristem note with a summary of the work in the branch beneath it.
- When a new agent is opened within the coral it will orient itself based on these Meristem notes, efficiently obtaining the right context and ready to pick up where the last instance left off.
A badge lets you know which folders have been seeded. And these can be de-seeded at any time. “De-seed” de-activates the memory system by moving the Charter and the pointer files into a dated sub-folder, and your own notes never move.
You can open an agent terminal on any branch with the “Open agent terminal here” command. Colour tagging branches and terminal windows then makes it easy to keep track of multiple agents working on different areas of your vault.
That part requires a separate plugin. Terminal, by polyipseity — https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/terminal is the plugin that brings real shells into Obsidian and must be installed and enabled to launch color-coded agent terminals through Liefwork. Liefwork never spawns a process itself, it simply asks Terminal to open one in the right folder. So you will need Terminal installed for this feature, and it is worth having anyway. My thanks to polyipseity for building it.
Note, the corals (which are ultimately just folders in your vault) are agent agnostic - this means you can be working on a coral with say Codex, then bring in a Claude Code agent and it will pick up the work seamlessly.
Limits
- Desktop only. It reads folder creation times through Node’s
fs, and mobile has no equivalent. - Obsidian 1.8.7 or newer.
- Agent terminals need Terminal by polyipseity. Without it that particular feature does nothing; everything else works.
- The coral pane is dark in both themes, by design. The Preview and controls follow your theme.
- No telemetry. The only network call in the plugin is a licence activation you trigger yourself.
- It stamps
createdandorderfrontmatter in notes it makes for you. It never modifies notes you already have. - Source-available, not open source. The repo is public, the directory build-verifies it — the
main.jsyou install reproduces byte-for-byte from the source — and each release converts to Apache-2.0 four years on.
Where Liefwork came from
I should note that Liefwork, in its current state, is dogfood. I made it the way it is because I find it useful, and thought others might do too.
As a trained biologist I have been obsessed with self-similar forms and organic growth for over two decades. And throughout my career - especially most recently managing multiple projects in parallel - I always wanted a way to pull back and see all of the work I had to do organised at once.
Yet modern tools and the filing systems they are based on do not allow for this - there must always be a folder, a box inside a box.
Then one day, when looking at the trees, I thought: wouldn’t it be better if files were arranged like leaves on a branch, with every leaf capable of becoming its own branch?
I thought the answer must be yes. Others have thought so too, although to my knowledge there has been no similar implementation - this work appears to be novel.
I figured that to make it would require 1-2 developers who I would have to hire, and I began exploring how I could raise the funds for this. With that in mind, I began dabbling with AI tools to see what sort of rough prototype I could create to help pitch the idea.
Then one thing led to another, and here we are, with Claude Code having implemented the engineering work for this here plugin. It is also the product of a very human mind and very human passion over branching branches.
And what I would love more than anything is to be able to hire some real-life developers to help me take the idea to the next level. In working towards that, your support would be tremendously valuable. A plant is most vulnerable as a seedling, which is where I believe I am with this.
The basic plugin with all of its functionality is free. For those who use it and find value in it, there is also the option of buying a “Pro” licence for €5.99, which offers a few cosmetic enhancements and is a way of supporting this work and all the future directions it may branch in.
I called it Liefwork because “lief” is an anagram of “file”. But, it is also an anagram of “life”. And that resonates with me.
I’m open to all sorts of ideas on potential collaborations and partnerships, so if that is of interest drop me a line at pavlos at liefwork dot com.
To try it: *Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search Liefwork*. There is more information about the project at www.liefwork.com
Thanks for reading, and really hope you find the plugin useful. Happy to answer any questions you may have.
Pavlos Zafiropoulos
