Are you an Obsidian user that feels left out when looking at the AI offerings of other tools? Well, this article is here to show you how to integrate this technology into your favourite notes app.
I will focus on a selection of the best tools to use, for the the simple route to effective use of AI in your Obsidian vault. There are lots of plugins being developed all the time though, so the ones listed here might not always be the best. For up-to-date information, I like to read the Obsidian Roundup by Eleanor Konik — this gives information on new plugins, and updates of old plugins so you can keep track of new features and resources.
The Possibilities are Limitless (Cliché but True)
Why use AI within your Obsidian vault? It can improve your workflows by speeding up mundane tasks such as formatting and summarising text. It can also help you spot similarities between your different notes, allowing you to make previously unrecognised connections between your ideas. You can run your notes within any prompt imaginable, allowing you to transform your text with any instructions. You’re also able to generate feedback for your text, helping you when you are stuck for ideas or want to improve a piece of writing.
Disclaimer
AI technology comes at a price. It’s a small price, but a price nonetheless. You need to sign up to receive an OpenAI API Key in order to use the plugins in this article. Use of the OpenAI API incurs a charge dependent upon the nature and size of the prompt, and the size of the response generated.
Despite the cost, these tools are very powerful, and utilising them in the right way will likely more than cover the value spent for access to this technology, so I would encourage the reader to commit and at least try out some of the tools found here.
And now, the best AI-integrating plugins in Obsidian…
QuickAdd
This plugin, from developer Christian Houmann, is one of the most downloaded Obsidian plugins of all-time, racking up over 275,000 downloads at the time of writing. Its role is to automate capture and templating tasks in your vault. It does this through using templates and capture boxes. Users can extend the functionality through macros, which are a series of QuickAdd commands ran in a designated order, and now through the AI Assistant, a new suite of settings that connects to large language models through the OpenAI API.
The basic premise for the AI Assistant is for it to execute prompt templates that are stored in a folder in your vault. The variables come from input that you add using a capture, or from text that you have highlighted in your active note. Because you are able to craft prompt templates that are stored, you can spend more time writing these prompts, meaning there is greater potential with this plugin than some others that.
You can also use the produced prompt outputs as variables to use within subsequent prompts. The potential that these kinds of workflows have is staggering — you could, for example, have one prompt that generates a content plan, another that follows this plan and generates the relevant content, and a following prompt that analyses and provides feedback for your content, so that you can weigh in with your own expertise. With these iterations, you could create extremely customised content using nothing but a series of prompts.
Here is a link to an article that I wrote, explaining in further detail how I used this feature to create a workflow that mimicked a team of editors, generating writing and SEO feedback for an article draft and then integrating said feedback into an improved version of the original piece:
Making an AI Writing Team that Generates Realistic Articles in Obsidian
ChatGPT MD
Despite the workflow capabilities of the QuickAdd AI assistant, sometimes you don’t require something this complicated, and simply want to have a conversation with ChatGPT. ChatGPT MD is a plugin that makes this possible from within your vault, so that you don’t have to manage your conversations from within a browser. Because they are contained in markdown files, you can also make changes to the prompts and responses easily, using the power of markdown for improved and extended formatting.
This plugin has been useful in my own workflow on many occasions, from answering questions on information or concepts that struggled understanding, to writing and improving code for graphs that I embedded in a university lab report. It’s also useful for suggesting feedback and generating content such as outlines ideas, when you don’t have a QuickAdd macro configured for the correct function.
Even as one of the first AI tools I added to my Obsidian vault, ChatGPT MD still holds a place in my workflow despite all the other options now available, because of it’s simplicity — it claims to bring the power of ChatGPT to Obsidian and it does just that, with straightforward commands and formatting, with no unnecessary additional functions.
Whisper
Whisper, from OpenAI, is a natural language tool that helps transcribe speech into text that is indistinguishable from the human-written alternative. These transcripts are extremely accurate, and are useful in situations where information is conveyed verbally (think lectures and meetings).
A new addition to my vault (only became available on the plugin list in the last week or so), I haven’t had much time to experiment with use cases with this plugin, also called Whisper. Having said this, it’s a simple plugin for doing one thing well — creating very accurate transcriptions, so I don’t know how much more there is to learn really.
The transcription power that this plugin provides has potential to be used in conjunction with the other AI tools that I mention on this list. You could run the plugin during the meeting, and then use QuickAdd AI Assistant or ChatGPT MD to read the transcript and generate a concise summary. I have plans to use this to transcribe lectures and then use a QuickAdd AI Assistant macro to transform the transcript into flashcards that I can revise the lecture content from.
Smart Connections
This plugin uses the power of AI to help you with exploring and making links between notes in your vault. It creates two tabs in the sidebar — one gives a list of the notes that are the most similar to the active on in terms of content, and the other creates an interface for you to put prompts to ChatGPT.
I use the list of similar notes for noticing links between notes in my vault. It helps to connect ideas together, better prompting my writing, and improving my chances of noticing something original that would help me to create better content. I also make notes about my own events and experiences, and this plugin helps me to spot trends and links within this topic too, helping me improve my wellbeing through informing changes in my lifestyle and habits.
The ChatGPT tab is useful, because the plugin provides the model with access to the content of your notes, which ChatGPT MD can’t do. So if you wanted to inquire as to how the content of one note links to the content of the other, you could ask for suggestions, and use the suggestions that ChatGPT’s response gives to draw parallels between contents of each note through linking to other ideas in the process.
Overall, this plugin is a valuable tool for your second brain, making sure that all of your ideas play nicely with each other, which can remove friction from your creative workflow by ensuring that notes contain adequate connections to each other.
Honourable Mention: AVA
This is the OG of Obsidian AI plugins, starting regular development in early October last year. It was the first AI plugin I used in my Obsidian vault, and therefore the one that introduced me to the power of AI for personal knowledge management. It performs functions such as generating, transforming and editing text, and can also suggest links for different notes in your vault, based on their content. It’s a very powerful plugin, and probably the best choice if you don’t require a large level of customisability and complexity as provided by a plugin like QuickAdd’s AI Assistant.
Unlike many other AI-based plugins in Obsidian, this one operates on a subscription service as opposed to using your own OpenAI API key. You create an account and receive a limited amount of functionality for free, but you have to pay monthly for regular usage of the plugin. This, and the absence of much customisability in terms of linking prompts together discourages me from using it continually as part of my system.
Having said this, it’s a good option if you are looking for one plugin that provides all AI functions for your notes — it even possesses image-generating capabilities, unlike the other plugins in this article. For this reason, it might be a good plugin to use if you are looking for an introduction to using AI tools in your second brain. From there, you can reach for tools that offer a more customisable function.
Privacy and AI
When using AI tools in Obsidian, it’s important to protect your privacy, because you are sending your notes to a server elsewhere. Check the privacy policies of any AI tools or plugins you plan to use. Make sure they don’t collect or share sensitive information without your permission. Be careful about what information you store in your vault. Consider whether it’s necessary to include sensitive personal information.
Conclusion
This is the end of my guide to the best AI plugins for your second brain in Obsidian. These tools are extremely powerful and, used in the right way, they can help increase your productivity and efficiency massively. If you learned something, give the article a clap and share it to someone who could benefit from it. Thank you very much for reading.
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