Property Kanban

Property Kanban

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A kanban task board for Obsidian driven entirely by note frontmatter properties. Task notes are the single source of truth: creating, moving, and deleting cards on the board updates the note properties instantly — and editing notes updates the board.

Features

Kanban board

• Cards are grouped automatically by any frontmatter field
• Cards within columns can be sorted automatically by any frontmatter property, ascending or descending
• Drag & drop cards between columns → frontmatter updates automatically
• Click a card title to open the note (if the note is already open in another tab, jumps to that tab instead of opening a duplicate)
• File changes, creations, and deletions are detected in real time and the board refreshes automatically

First-run setup (automatic sample tasks)

The first time you open the board, if the task folder contains no notes yet, the plugin creates the folder and seeds four sample tasks.

• The sample note bodies explain basic usage (moving cards, adding tasks, customizing the board, swimlanes), generated in English, Japanese, or Chinese (Simplified/Traditional) following your Obsidian language setting
• The sample properties match the default card display properties (category / project / due / created), so the colored tags and due dates render out of the box
• The board opens in swimlane view (lane: project × column: status); with two different project values included, the two-dimensional layout is visible from the start
• This happens only once, on the first board open. Folders that already contain notes are left untouched, and existing notes are never modified
• Delete the sample cards from the board whenever you no longer need them

Swimlanes

Group in two dimensions using two properties:

• Lane: the outer grouping (e.g. project) → horizontal rows
• Column: the grouping within each lane (e.g. status) → columns inside each row

┌─ Project A ──────────────────────────────┐
│ | To do  | In progress | Done |          │
│ | card   | card        | card |          │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─ Project B ──────────────────────────────┐
│ | To do  | In progress | Done |          │
│ | card   | card        | card |          │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘

Cards can be dragged between lanes as well — both the lane and column frontmatter fields are updated at once.

Card creation

• Create from the "+ New task" button at the top of the board, or "+ Add card" in each column
• Values auto-detected from the frontmatter of existing tasks are shown as suggestions
• You can also type a brand-new value to set a new property value on the spot
• Fields whose Obsidian property type is Date or Date & time get a native calendar picker instead of a text box, and the value is written in Obsidian's own format (YYYY-MM-DD / YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss). Untyped fields whose existing values all look like dates get the picker too
• A Markdown note with frontmatter is created in the configured folder

Card deletion

• Hover over a card to reveal the ⋯ menu button
• Choosing "Delete" moves the note to the trash
• A confirmation dialog is shown (check "Don't ask again" to skip it in the future)
• On deletion, parent links of its child notes are cleared and the note is removed from its parent's children list automatically

Quick action button

Show a one-click button on cards that sets a specific frontmatter field to a preset value (e.g. set status to "Done").

• Enable it under "Quick action button" in the settings and configure the label, target field, and value
• The button is hidden on cards that already have the target value
• Clicking it updates the note frontmatter instantly and shows a notice

Parent/child links

Manage parent/child relationships between cards as frontmatter wikilinks, so you can follow the hierarchy in Obsidian's graph view and backlinks.

• Data model: the child note's parent link (e.g. parent: "[[Parent task]]") is the source of truth; the parent note's children list (a list of wikilinks) is derived data generated by the plugin
• Set parent: card ⋯ menu → "Set parent…" opens a fuzzy search (the card itself and its descendants are excluded to prevent cycles)
• Remove parent: ⋯ menu → "Remove parent"
• Add child: parent card's ⋯ menu → "Add child…" opens the create modal with the parent pre-selected
• Multi-level: since the hierarchy follows parent links, grandchildren and deeper levels work too
• Rebuild: if lists get out of sync from manual edits, use "Rebuild parent/child links" in the settings or the command palette to regenerate all children lists

Board options (⚙)

Click the gear icon in the header to open the board options popover:

Card display properties

Configure which frontmatter fields are shown as tags on cards.

• Add or remove any field — pick one from the fields found in your task folder notes, or type a field name manually
• Pick a color per field (blue, green, red, yellow, purple, gray, orange, pink, teal)
• Toggle from the settings or the board options popover

Installation

From the community plugin browser (recommended)

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for "Property Kanban"
3. Install and enable

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Create the folder .obsidian/plugins/property-kanban/ in your vault
3. Copy the three files into that folder
4. Reload Obsidian and enable "Property Kanban" under Settings → Community plugins

Usage

1. Enable the plugin
2. Click the dashboard icon in the left ribbon, or run Property Kanban: Open board from the command palette
3. The board opens. On first open, the task folder and four sample tasks with a short usage guide are created automatically, shown as swimlanes (lane: project × column: status)
4. To match your own notes, pick any frontmatter properties as the lane/column in the ⚙ board options — columns are generated automatically from the values your notes actually use (set Column to "None" for a one-dimensional board)

Settings

Grouping (lane/column), ordering, visibility, and zoom are configured from the board options popover and saved automatically.

The plugin UI is in English by default and switches to Japanese or Chinese (Simplified/Traditional) following the Obsidian interface language.

How it works

• Frontmatter is read and written by parsing file content directly (no dependency on the metadata cache)
• Grouping fields and column values are auto-detected from task note frontmatter
• Board refreshes are debounced (150 ms) to coalesce rapid file events
• Card deletion uses fileManager.trashFile() — notes are moved to the trash, never permanently deleted
• No data ever leaves your vault; the plugin makes no network requests

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Development build (watch mode)
npm run dev

# Production build
npm run build

# Type check + ESLint + tests
npm run check

License

MIT