Vault Inspector: find broken links and orphan attachments

Plugin/Theme Disclaimer

Is this project open source? Yes
Is this project completely free? Yes
Is this project vibe-coded beyond the author’s ability to comprehend how it works? No
Community Directory: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/vault-inspector


Hi everyone, I built Vault Inspector, an open-source Obsidian community plugin for checking vault health and cleanup issues.

The workflow I wanted to improve is vault maintenance. In older or larger vaults, it is easy to accumulate broken links, moved attachments, orphan files, empty notes, and duplicate candidates without noticing.

Vault Inspector scans for:

  • Broken links.
  • Missing attachments.
  • Orphan attachments and other orphan files.
  • Duplicate file candidates.
  • Empty notes.
  • Tag usage issues.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/rogerdigital/vault-inspector

I would appreciate feedback from people who maintain large or long-lived vaults, especially around scanner types, severity levels, and cleanup workflows.

2 Likes

Small update: Vault Inspector 0.4.3 is out.

What changed:

  • Fixed short wiki-linked attachments such as ![[image.png]] being treated as missing when the actual file lives in an attachment folder like attachments/image.png.
  • Fixed referenced wiki-linked images being reported as orphan attachments.
  • Added vinspect as a shorter CLI command, while keeping vault-inspector available.
  • Simplified the README CLI examples around the common scan path.
  • Clarified how CLI external-link checks work.

Release notes:

I’m especially interested in feedback from people with larger vaults or non-standard attachment folder setups, since those cases help improve the scanner behavior.

Small update: Vault Inspector 0.4.4 is out.

Vault Inspector scan results

What changed:

  • Added scan progress in the Obsidian sidebar.
  • Added optional CLI progress with --progress; progress goes to stderr so JSON/Markdown output stays machine-readable.
  • Improved result navigation: paths, URLs, broken-link targets, frontmatter properties, and tags can now jump to the relevant location.
  • Improved result display for duplicate files and tag usage. Duplicate file candidates now show each file separately, and tag issues show #tag chips.
  • Scan result text can be selected and copied.
  • External link checks now also detect bare HTTP/HTTPS URLs in note bodies. External Links remains opt-in by default.
  • Markdown reports now include scanner-specific details.
  • Scan durations now use millisecond, second, or minute units depending on the actual runtime.

Links:

I’m especially interested in feedback on result navigation, duplicate-file display, and larger vault scan behavior.