Redline

Redline

Add PR-style review comments to any document in your Obsidian vault. Anchor comments to specific paragraphs, headings, list items, images, code blocks, callouts, or tables — your source documents stay clean because comments live in a sibling .review.md sidecar file.

Demo

Why

Obsidian is great for writing long documents collaboratively (with yourself, your future self, or external tools), but it has no built-in equivalent to a GitHub pull-request review. This plugin adds that workflow:

1. Read a document.
2. Drop comments where something needs to change.
3. Hand the document plus its .review.md sidecar to any tool — a human, a script, an AI assistant — that can act on the comments.
4. The tool resolves each comment by editing the source doc and flipping the comment status in the sidecar.

The plugin is intentionally protocol-based: it stores comments in a documented markdown sidecar format and does not bind to any specific downstream tool. Anything that can read markdown can participate.

Features

• Add review comment on any paragraph, heading, list item, image, code block, callout, or table.
• Block-reference anchoring: comments are pinned to Obsidian's native ^blockref markers, so they survive document reflow.
• Markdown rendered comment bodies in both the sidebar cards and the editor hover tooltip — bold, links, lists, code spans, inline images all just work.
• Edit existing comments from the sidebar; Cmd/Ctrl+Enter saves the modal.
• Hover anywhere in the anchored block to see the comment as a tooltip (paragraph-wide, code-block-wide, table-wide, callout-wide).
• Per-comment due dates with an overdue indicator (red border, dot, and an "overdue" sidebar filter).
• Gutter markers in the editor: amber for open, gray for resolved, red for stale or overdue.
• Review sidebar for the active document with filters (all / open / overdue / resolved / stale), jump-to-anchor, edit, toggle status, reattach, and delete.
• Cross-doc dashboard lists every .review.md in the vault with per-doc open / stale / overdue counts, sortable columns, and click-through to the source doc.
• Stale anchor detection + Reattach — if the anchor block is edited away, the comment is flagged stale; saved anchor context lets you reattach with one click.
• Source-doc rename / move / delete are mirrored on the sidecar so reviews follow the document around (toggle in settings).
• Jump to next open comment — keyboard-friendly navigation through unresolved items.
• Per-document or central-folder sidecar storage (settings).

Installation

From the Obsidian community catalog (once published)

Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search "Redline" → Install → Enable.

Manual install

1. Build (or download a release):

   git clone <this-repo>
   cd redline
   npm install
   npm run build
   

2. Copy manifest.json, main.js, and styles.css to <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/redline/.
3. Reload Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → enable "Redline".

Usage

Add a comment

1. Place your cursor on a paragraph (or select within it), or click an image/code-block/heading/etc.
2. Open the command palette (Cmd/Ctrl + P) → Redline: Add comment at cursor.
3. Type your comment (markdown is supported). Optionally pick a due date. Press Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to save.

The plugin will:

• Inject a ^blockref anchor on the target block if it doesn't have one (reusing an existing anchor when present).
• Create (or update) <doc>.review.md next to your document.
• Show an amber gutter dot next to the anchored line and a card in the sidebar.

Open the review sidebar

Click the speech-bubble ribbon icon on the left, or run Redline: Toggle sidebar.

Open the cross-doc dashboard

Click the layout-dashboard ribbon icon, or run Redline: Open dashboard. You get a sortable table of every doc that has open / stale / overdue comments — click a row to jump into that doc.

Resolve, edit, reattach a comment

In the sidebar:

• Resolve / Reopen — flips status between open and resolved.
• Edit — open the modal again to update the body or due date.
• Reattach — only shown for stale comments; uses the saved anchor context to find the original line and re-injects a fresh anchor.

Hand off to a downstream tool

The <doc>.review.md sidecar is a plain, documented markdown file. Any tool you trust to edit your documents — a script, an AI assistant, a coworker — can read the open comments and apply the requested changes.

Settings

• Sidecar location — alongside the source doc (default) or in a central _reviews/ folder.
• Central folder name — vault-relative folder used when central layout is selected.
• Mirror source-doc lifecycle — when on (default), renaming, moving, or deleting a source doc also renames/moves/deletes its sidecar.

Commands

Development

npm install
npm run dev       # watch mode
npm run build     # production build
npm test          # vitest unit tests for parser + block-id logic

Tests cover the sidecar parser/serializer round-trip and the block-id injection logic. UI components are verified manually inside Obsidian.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.