Obsidian AI Project Management¶

Manage your projects by talking to AI, visualize them in Obsidian

A complete AI-native project management system that combines the power of AI assistants with visual project organization in Obsidian.

What is This?¶

This is a two-component system that lets you:

1. Talk to AI to manage your project - Create milestones, stories, tasks, track dependencies, make decisions
2. Visualize everything in Obsidian - See your project structure on a canvas, navigate relationships, review progress

graph LR
    A[You] -->|Natural Language| B[AI Assistant]
    B -->|MCP Server| C[Obsidian Vault]
    C -->|Plugin| D[Visual Canvas]
    D -->|Review| A

    style A fill:#e1f5ff
    style B fill:#fff3e0
    style C fill:#f3e5f5
    style D fill:#e8f5e9

Your Workflow¶

sequenceDiagram
    participant You
    participant AI
    participant Vault as Obsidian Vault
    participant Canvas as Visual Canvas

    You->>AI: "Create a milestone for Q1 launch"
    AI->>Vault: Creates M-001 with 3 stories
    AI-->>You: ✓ Created M-001

    You->>Canvas: Opens Obsidian
    Canvas->>Vault: Reads entities
    Canvas-->>You: Shows visual structure

    You->>AI: "What's blocking the launch?"
    AI->>Vault: Analyzes dependencies
    AI-->>You: Reports blockers

Components¶

Both components build from the same repository and share one entity engine — see What's New below.

1. Obsidian MCP Server¶

AI-native project management via Model Context Protocol

• Create and update entities via natural language
• Bulk operations and batch processing
• Project analysis and insights
• Dependency tracking and cycle detection
• Search and filtering

🖥️ Bundled stdio server: bin/mcp-server.mjs, built from the plugin repo (npm run build:mcp) and pointed at your project folder via the VAULT_PATH environment variable — see Installation

2. Canvas Project Manager Plugin¶

Visual project management in Obsidian

• Canvas-based visual organization
• Hierarchical entity layout
• Interactive navigation
• Relationship visualization
• Archive management

📦 NPM Package: @ostanlabs/canvas-project-manager (v1.8.96) 📂 Repository & Releases: ostanlabs/obsidian_plugin

What's New¶

• Title-only filenames — entity files are named after their title (e.g. Build_Auth_System.md); the entity ID lives in frontmatter, not the filename. YAML is serialized quote-when-needed (plain scalars unless quoting is required).
• schema.json is the single source of truth — entity types, relationships, positioning, and workstreams are runtime-editable via set_schema or the interactive HTML designer, and hot-reload into both MCP validation and plugin positioning. See Schema & Customization.
• Containment-chain positioning — the canvas nests decision → document → feature → implementing story/milestone → workstream lane, and multi-target decisions/documents now resolve fully instead of falling into the orphan grid. See Visual Canvas.
• Validation advisories — validate_project now surfaces non-blocking fan-out guidance (document ≤ 2 features, decision ≤ 2 documents, feature ≤ 3 implementers, feature documented by ≤ 2 documents) with concrete reorganization suggestions. See Relationships.
• Hardened write path — update_entity accepts flat relationship keys (they route into relationships automatically), updates the markdown body via a body key ("" clears it), preserves the body on every rewrite, can update archived entities, and deletes passthrough-only fields set to null/[]. reconcile_relationships is recency-aware: a forward link edited more recently than its reverse is authoritative instead of being overwritten from stale reverse links.
• Stricter parser semantics — legacy created/updated/effort aliases are no longer auto-migrated (use created_at/updated_at/workstream); a missing workstream defaults to engineering; unknown entity types are kept literal and flagged by validation. See the FAQ.

Key Features¶

🤖 AI-Powered Management¶

• Natural language project creation
• Intelligent dependency analysis
• Automated relationship syncing
• Bulk operations with dry-run preview

📊 Visual Organization¶

• Hierarchical canvas layout
• Workstream-based lanes
• Entity type differentiation
• Interactive navigation

🔗 Seamless Integration¶

• Shared entity model
• Bidirectional relationship sync
• Real-time updates
• Archive management

🎯 Smart Features¶

• Workstream normalization
• Transitive dependency removal
• Cycle detection
• Feature coverage tracking

Use Cases¶

• Solo Development - Manage personal projects with AI assistance
• Feature Planning - Design and track product features
• Technical Decisions - Document and track architectural decisions
• Spec-Driven Development - AI creates specs, another AI implements
• Progress Tracking - Visual review of project status

Getting Started¶

Support¶

• Issues: GitHub Issues
• Discussions: GitHub Discussions

License¶

MIT License - See individual component repositories for details.