Claude Panel

Claude Panel

Provided by Ryukyu HUB Inc. (琉球HUB株式会社).

Claude Panel adds a right-sidebar chat panel powered by Claude Code to Obsidian. It spawns the claude CLI as a subprocess with the active vault as its working directory, so reading, writing, searching, and running commands against your notes all happen inside Obsidian.

Desktop only. Requires the claude CLI to be installed and signed in (Claude Pro / Max subscription, or an Anthropic API key).

日本語の解説は README.ja.md を参照してください。

Features

• Streaming chat panel in the right sidebar, with tool-use pills and per-turn cost / duration
• Active note is auto-mentioned as @filename on every turn (toggleable)
• File picker for additional mentions; paste clipboard images directly into the composer
• Editor / preview selection is captured automatically so you can ask "explain this" without copy/paste
• Sessions are resumed via claude --resume <session> (Claude Code's auto-compaction stays active)
• Account & usage panel — Claude plan, organization, and rate-limit consumption (5h / 7d / Sonnet) in real time
• Slash commands: /clear, /help, /model, /think, /mcp, /usage, /login
• Project-level MCP servers: drop a .mcp.json at the vault root and it is loaded automatically
• UI follows Obsidian's language setting (English / 日本語)

Installation

New to the Claude CLI? Parts of this guide use a terminal. On Windows, open PowerShell; on macOS, open Terminal. Copy and paste each command block one line at a time. If a command says "not found," see Troubleshooting at the bottom.

1. Install prerequisites

The claude CLI runs on Node.js. Install Node.js (and Git, plus PowerShell 7 on Windows) first.

Windows — install with winget (recommended)

Open PowerShell as Administrator and run these three commands in order:

winget install --id OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS         # Node.js + npm
winget install --id Git.Git                   # Git
winget install --id Microsoft.PowerShell      # PowerShell 7 (the older 5.1 mangles pasted auth codes)

After installation, close PowerShell and re-open a fresh PowerShell 7 (pwsh) window before continuing — the PATH needs to be reloaded.

If winget is unavailable on older Windows, you can install each tool directly from its official site: Node.js LTS / Git for Windows / PowerShell 7.

macOS — install with brew (recommended)

In Terminal:

# Only run this line if Homebrew is not already installed:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# Node.js (npm included) and Git
brew install node git

2. Install the Claude Code CLI

One command on every OS:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

Run claude --version afterwards. If it prints a version, you are good.

On macOS you can also install via Homebrew Cask: brew install --cask claude-code.

3. Sign in to Claude

claude /login

A browser opens to Anthropic's login screen. Sign in with your Claude Pro / Max subscription or your Anthropic API key.

If the browser does not open automatically: copy the https://claude.ai/... URL printed in the terminal and paste it into your browser's address bar. After signing in, copy the auth code shown on the page and paste it back into the terminal.

If pasting the auth code is mangled on Windows: Windows' built-in PowerShell 5.1 has a known clipboard bug. Install PowerShell 7 with winget install Microsoft.PowerShell (see above) and retry in a fresh pwsh window.

4. Install the Obsidian plugin

1. In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Claude Panel, and click Install.
2. Enable Claude Panel in the Community plugins list.
3. Open the plugin's setting tab. The top "Setup status" block shows whether the claude CLI was auto-detected. If not, paste the absolute path to the binary (for example /usr/local/bin/claude on macOS, or C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\npm\claude.cmd on Windows).

For sideloading or pre-release builds, BRAT can install the plugin straight from this repository.

Troubleshooting

claude: command not found / 'claude.exe' is not recognized

Right after npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code, your terminal has not picked up the new PATH. Closing and re-opening the terminal usually fixes it. If detection still fails, fill in the absolute path to the binary in the plugin's "claude CLI path" setting:

• macOS (Intel): /usr/local/bin/claude
• macOS (Apple Silicon, Homebrew): /opt/homebrew/bin/claude
• macOS (npm global): something like ~/.nvm/versions/node/<ver>/bin/claude
• Windows (npm global): C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\npm\claude.cmd

Auth code paste is broken / input shows up blank on Windows

The bundled PowerShell 5.1 has a clipboard bug. Install PowerShell 7 with winget install Microsoft.PowerShell and re-run claude /login in a fresh pwsh window.

The browser does not open (Windows / WSL / Remote Desktop / SSH)

Copy the URL the terminal prints, paste it into a browser address bar manually, and paste the auth code that appears after sign-in back into the terminal.

npm: command not found

Node.js is not installed. Go back to Install prerequisites and run winget install OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS (Windows) or brew install node (macOS).

The plugin does not start, or chat fails to send

Check that the "Setup status" block in the plugin's setting tab reads ✓ Available. If it shows ✗ or ⚠, follow the install / login steps shown directly below it. The "Re-check" button refreshes the status.

Usage

• Click the ribbon icon or run Open Claude Panel from the command palette to open the panel.
• Type a prompt and press Enter (or click Send). Esc cancels the running turn; Shift+Enter inserts a newline.
• Use the Attach button to mention additional notes, or paste a clipboard image straight into the composer.
• Click the user icon in the panel header to see your Claude account info and current rate-limit consumption.

Development

git clone https://github.com/ryukyuhub/obsidian-claude-panel-ryukyuhub.git
cd obsidian-claude-panel-ryukyuhub
npm install
cp esbuild.config.local.example.mjs esbuild.config.local.mjs
# Edit esbuild.config.local.mjs and point VAULT_OUT_DIRS at your vault's plugin folder.
npm run dev      # esbuild watch — writes main.js and assets straight into the vault

The build writes main.js / manifest.json / styles.css directly into your configured vault plugin folder, so toggling the plugin off/on (or using Hot Reload) picks up changes instantly.

esbuild.config.local.mjs is gitignored, so each developer keeps their own path. You can also skip the file and set OUT_DIR=... per invocation:

OUT_DIR=/path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/claude-panel-ryukyuhub npm run dev

When neither is set, the build falls back to ./build/ (used by the CI release packaging).

There is no test suite or lint config. For strict type checking, run npx tsc --noEmit.

Architecture

Files under src/:

• main.ts — Plugin entry point. Registers the view, ribbon icon, commands, and setting tab.
• view.ts — ItemView for the sidebar. Owns chat history, the composer, attachments, paste handling, prompt assembly, and the streaming render loop.
• agent.ts — Subprocess layer. runAgent() spawns claude with stream-json I/O and dispatches each JSON line to text / tool-use / result / error / usage events.
• chat-message.ts — Message and part types plus the renderer. Tool invocations are shown as styled pills rather than raw JSON.
• selection-capture.ts — 250 ms polling loop that reads the active markdown view's selection (editor or preview). A 1.5 s "handoff grace" keeps the captured selection alive when the user clicks the panel.
• slash-commands.ts — Local handlers for /clear, /help, /model, /think, /mcp, /usage, /login. Unmatched slash input is forwarded to the CLI.
• account-usage.ts — Account & usage modal. Reads claude auth status --json and the OAuth token (macOS Keychain; ~/.claude/.credentials.json on Linux / Windows), then queries the Anthropic OAuth usage endpoint.
• file-picker.ts — Fuzzy file picker for the Attach button.
• settings.ts — Settings type, defaults, and the setting tab.

The subprocess strips ANTHROPIC_API_KEY from the child environment so the CLI reuses the existing Claude Code login (subscription auth). On macOS / Linux, no-op open / xdg-open shell scripts are placed in a temporary directory and prepended to PATH to suppress MCP servers that try to open a browser window on startup (e.g. Serena's auto-dashboard). On Windows the equivalent is achieved by setting BROWSER=true.

Release

Pushing a semver tag triggers a release. .github/workflows/release.yml builds the plugin, attaches a zip, and emits GitHub artifact attestations for the release assets.

npm version 0.1.8 -m "Release %s"
git push --follow-tags

npm version runs version-bump.mjs, which syncs the bumped version into manifest.json and versions.json.

License

MIT — © 2026 Ryukyu HUB Inc. (琉球HUB株式会社). See LICENSE for details.