Obsidian-central tool

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I am about to start the development of a tool to make a central Obsidian vault for deployment of common resources across vaults.

The tool would use an Obsidian central vault where you write, test, and deploy feature to other vaults. That way the destination vault is not affected by potential overwriting. Of course, the best is having a Git repo where you can go forward and backward in time, or also create worktrees to work in different tasks on the same repository.

I am thinking on using Python; not developing inside Obsidian as a JS script, template or plugin, to be able to handle it at system level.

| Tool               | Direction        | Purpose                             | |--------------------|------------------|-------------------------------------| | obsidian-central   | Central → Vaults | Deploy shared configs & resources   |

The obsidian-central concept would work like this:

  central-vault/
  ├── templates/           → deploy to multiple vaults
  ├── scripts/
  ├── hotkeys/
  ├── properties/
  ├── maps/
  ├── folder-structures/
  ├── attachments/
  ├── dashboards/
  ├── plugins-config/
  ├── dashboards/
  └── deploy.json          → defines what goes where

Potential features:

  1. Deploy modes: copy, symlink, or hardlink
  2. Target vaults: deploy to one or many vaults that share commonalities
  3. Selective sync: choose what to deploy (templates only, hotkeys only, data.json, etc.)
  4. Profiles: “minimal”, “full”, “writing”, “coding” preset configurations
  5. Diff/preview: show log what would change before deploying
  6. Dry run mode

Sample config for deployment:


  { 
    "central": "/home/user/obsidian/central", 
    "targets": [ 
      "/home/user/obsidian/work", 
      "/home/user/obsidian/personal" 
    ], 
    "deploy": { 
      "templates": { "mode": "symlink" }, 
      "hotkeys": { "mode": "copy" }, 
      "scripts": { "mode": "symlink" } 
    } 
  }

If you have any ideas or suggestions, be welcome.

After I finish it, I will share it via GitHub.

Thanks,

f0nzie@thewoodlands-tx

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What I do is have different vaults and for all and I use various Python scripts to create and update information in them.
I did not think of a master vault as command control but I do keep all my scripts there so I have them safe (I don’t like to put anyhing in dot folders, yet).
In one, I removed a large, resource-heavy part and delegated it to a different repo and I do use a symlink to reference and incorporate it.
I use VS Code Editor with various workspaces which hold all or parts of my vaults/repos and can query the workspace (whether a single vault or more) via the index generated by VS Code through the remote repos (unlimited).

A one-vault-to-rule-them-all stace with multiple apps/tools open

  • Obsidian: can run any script, shell, or js/ts to call python scripts even
  • AI capable querier/editor like the unlimited repo indexer VS Code Editor (never mind the fancier clones)
  • CLI/terminal

takes some getting used to and probably years of putting together, depending on one’s needs and I am curious how the proposed solution can benefit and lure in the average note taker.