Chronostra

Chronostra

Chronos (time) + Stratum (layer) — a life-goal planning table that lives inside your Obsidian vault.

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The Problem

Life-planning tools force a choice: beautiful but locked inside proprietary apps, or flexible but scattered across markdown files with no structure. They also confuse two different things — the dream you'll spend a decade chasing, and the chore you might do this weekend — and treat both as "tasks."

Chronostra refuses both compromises. Every row is a goal. Goals differ by scope (how big a dream) and commitment (how seriously you mean it), not by execution type. Your data stays in a plain markdown file you own, but the view above it is structured and zoomable across decades.

What It Does

Chronostra renders a single future-data code block as a full-width interactive table. Every row carries:

• A label (the goal itself, e.g. "Travel every prefecture in Japan")
• A scope — Vision, Goal, or Step (see below)
• A commitment — Must ★ or Wish ☆ (optional)
• Three metric columns — Future (where you want to be), Now (where you are), and Gap (the delta)
• A timeline spanning the years you choose (default 2025–2050)

Core Concepts

Scope — how big a dream

Every goal is sized into one of three layers:

A Vision can nest Goals beneath it, which can nest Steps. But you can skip levels — a single Step can sit directly under a Category (e.g. "Stretch every morning") without any Vision parent. Scope is decoupled from depth: depth gives the tree, scope gives the visual weight.

Commitment — how seriously you mean it

Orthogonal to scope, you can flag any goal:

• ★ Must — you commit to achieving this. Requires a year on the timeline; otherwise the badge turns red.
• ☆ Wish — you'd love it to happen, but no pressure. Stays in your view without nagging.
• (none) — neutral. Just a goal you're tracking.

A Vision can be Must ("found a company by 50") and a Step can be Wish ("see the northern lights, someday"). Mix and match.

Category — the grouping above goals

The top level (path[0]) is a Category — a pure grouping like Health, Work, Relationships, Money, Learning, Home. Categories don't have scope or commitment; they're just buckets.

Features

• 1000+ rows with virtual scrolling at 60fps
• Frozen columns — the goal/Future/Now/Gap columns stay locked while you scroll the timeline
• Inline editing — double-click any cell; changes auto-save to your markdown file
• Tree operations — right-click for add child / sibling, set scope, focus, delete
• Drag-and-drop rows between parents
• Filters — by status, scope, commitment, search text, linked-note state
• Bidirectional sync — edit the JSON and the table updates; edit the table and the file updates
• Linked notes — bind any goal to an Obsidian note for long-form thinking
• Year focus — click a column header to highlight one year across all rows

Data Format

Your data lives in a fenced code block inside any markdown file:

```future-data
[
  {
    "id": "1",
    "path": ["Health", "Travel every prefecture in Japan"],
    "scope": "vision",
    "commitment": "wish",
    "metrics": { "future": "47/47 visited", "now": "12/47", "gap": "35 to go" },
    "timeline": [{ "year": 2050, "text": "Final prefecture" }]
  },
  {
    "id": "2",
    "path": ["Health", "Travel every prefecture in Japan", "Visit Amami Ōshima"],
    "scope": "step",
    "commitment": "must",
    "metrics": { "future": "Booked & visited", "now": "Researching", "gap": "Plan trip" },
    "timeline": [{ "year": 2027, "text": "Ferry from Kagoshima" }]
  },
  {
    "id": "3",
    "path": ["Health", "Stretch every morning"],
    "scope": "step",
    "metrics": { "future": "Daily habit", "now": "3x/week", "gap": "Consistency" },
    "timeline": []
  }
]
```

Notes:

• path is an array of labels; the first element is the Category, the rest define nesting.
• scope and commitment are optional. If scope is omitted, it's inferred from depth (1=vision, 2=goal, 3=step) — so existing data without these fields still works.
• No database. No sync service. No lock-in. Just JSON in a markdown file.

Installation

1. Clone this repository and run npm install && npm run build
2. Install into your vault (pick one):
   • Symlink (development): OBSIDIAN_VAULT=/path/to/vault npm run link:vault
   • Manual: copy the entire dist/ folder to .obsidian/plugins/chronostra/ (must contain main.js, styles.css, manifest.json)
3. In Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → Enable Chronostra
4. Copy examples/Future plan.md into your vault (or set Settings → Chronostra → Target file to your own note with a future-data block)
5. Open the table: ribbon table icon, command palette Open Chronostra, or embed inline by opening a note that contains a future-data code block

Development

npm install
npm run dev    # watch mode — rebuilds on every change
npm run build  # production build

The build outputs dist/main.js, dist/styles.css, and dist/manifest.json.

Tech Stack

• Svelte 5 — runes-based reactivity ($state, $derived, $effect)
• TanStack Virtual Core — row virtualization for large datasets
• Obsidian API — ItemView, vault read/write, settings persistence
• esbuild — fast bundling with esbuild-svelte

Design Philosophy

Chronostra follows the Swiss/International Typographic Style: monochrome palette, typographic hierarchy over decorative elements, generous whitespace, functional minimalism. Visual weight comes from scope (Vision = larger, Step = smaller), not from color. The plugin inherits your Obsidian theme's CSS variables, so it looks native in any theme — light or dark.

License

MIT