Smart Connections for Obsidian

The project follows an open-core model:

• Core Smart Plugins: These are free, source-available plugins focused on essential features (e.g., basic connections or context selection).
• Pro Plugins: These sit on top of the core and include advanced, highly configurable options that require continuous maintenance (e.g., Connections Pro or Smart Chat Pro). Pro plugins are used to fund the ongoing development and maintenance of the ecosystem.

Connections Pro is an advanced extension for power users that provides deeper integration and control. Key features include:

• Inline connections: Small badges in the editor showing strong matches for a block with a pop-over for related content.
• Footer connections: A persistent panel that updates in real-time as you type.
• Configurable scoring and ranking: Ability to choose different algorithms and add a rerank stage.
• Connections in Bases: Integration with Obsidian Bases using score_connection and list_connections to show similarity columns and related note lists in tables.
• Advanced filters and models: Extended Smart Environment controls for embeddings, collections, and include/exclude rules.
• Early release experiments: Access to new features in Early channels.

The Smart Environment is the shared local core that powers the Smart Ecosystem (including Smart Connections and Smart Chat). It provides the following functionality:

• Note Indexing: Maintains an up-to-date index of your notes using embeddings.
• Obsidian Integration: Listens for Obsidian events to ensure indexing and statistics stay synchronized with your vault.
• Centralized Management: Provides a single location to manage models, sources, and exclusions across all Smart Plugins.

The Lookup view allows you to perform ad hoc semantic searches across your entire vault based on meaning rather than exact text matches.

Accessing the view

• Click the Lookup icon in the left ribbon.
• Run the Open: Lookup view command from the command palette.

Important Note on Semantic Search

Semantic queries do not behave like standard plain-text searches. A note containing the exact text of your query might not appear in the results if the semantic meaning does not align.

Smart Chat is no longer bundled with the Core Smart Connections plugin. To use chat features, you must install the Smart Chat plugin separately from the Obsidian Community plugins.

For advanced model routing and multi-provider support (including cloud and local API-based models), you need Smart Chat Pro.

You can quickly discover new content by jumping to a random note that has a strong semantic connection to your current note.

How to use

• Click the random connection icon in the ribbon.
• Run the Open: Random note from connections command from the command palette.

Note: The Connections view must be active for this command to work.

You can "Pin" connections to ensure they remain always visible in the connections view.

Note for Connections Pro users: Hidden and pinned connections are utilized by new connection algorithms to improve search and similarity results.

Important system events (such as initial indexing completion, source reimports, or folder exclusion warnings) are surfaced in a dedicated notifications modal rather than standard Obsidian notifications.

• On Desktop: Click the Smart Env item in the status bar to open the notifications modal.
• On Mobile: Tap the Smart Environment notice that appears at the bottom of the Connections view.

To use your connections as context for an AI chat, click the connections view menu button and select the "Send to Smart Context" option (represented by a briefcase icon).

This action copies all content from the current connections to your clipboard. The Smart Context view also allows you to manually add or remove specific items from the selection before performing the one-click copy.