Glassine Sync

Glassine Sync

An Obsidian plugin that syncs selected notes with a self-hosted Glassine instance over its REST sync API — an alternative to Glassine's git/obsidian-git adapter that works the same way on desktop and mobile.

What it does

• Mark any note for sync by adding a frontmatter property (default glassine) to it. Its presence means "sync this note"; its value is a link to the note's document on Glassine, filled in automatically.
• Edits sync to Glassine shortly after you stop typing. Accepted edits and other changes made on Glassine are pulled back down on note open and on a timer.
• Pair as many vaults as you like — each one pairs independently and shows up as its own row in Glassine's Admin → Devices, where you can revoke it at any time.
• No conflict resolution: syncing promptly on every change keeps the window for a real collision small, and the rare conflict resolves as last-write-wins.
• Embedded images sync too, in either direction. On push, only Obsidian's ![[wiki-style]] embeds are uploaded — a plain ![](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yoav6/obsidian-glassine-sync/HEAD/path) markdown image is left as-is, since it's far more likely to already be a URL than a local file meant for Glassine. Glassine understands ![[wiki-style]] embeds natively, so a pushed image keeps that same syntax; only its path is rewritten, to the image's fully-resolved vault path (an Obsidian embed may rely on vault-wide fuzzy filename matching, which Glassine doesn't have). Pulled images — in either syntax, whichever the document actually contains — are downloaded to the vault-relative path the document names. Only the copy sent to Glassine is ever rewritten — a note's own embed syntax on disk is never touched.

See documentation/sync-api.md in the Glassine server's repository for the protocol this plugin speaks — it's a general-purpose API, not specific to Obsidian, if you'd rather write your own client.

Setup

1. Install and enable the plugin, then open its settings.
2. Set Glassine server URL to your instance's origin (e.g. https://glassine.example.com).
3. Give this device a name and click Pair. A browser tab opens for you to approve the device while signed in to Glassine as the author; the plugin picks up its token automatically once approved.
4. Add the glassine property (empty value) to any note you want to sync. On its next edit, the plugin creates a matching document on Glassine and writes that document's URL back into the property.
5. To sync a note against an existing Glassine document instead, paste that document's URL as the property's value yourself.

Notes on trust

The device token this plugin stores (in the vault's plugin data) is long-lived and stays valid until you revoke it from Glassine's Admin → Devices — there's no periodic re-login. Treat it like any other stored credential: it's stored in plain text in the plugin's local data, the same way Obsidian's own git plugin stores your git remote credentials.

Development

npm install
npm run dev     # watch build
npm run build   # production build + typecheck