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Watermelon Workbench

by Lynn
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Description

Watermelon Workbench is a cozy long-form writing workspace for Obsidian. It keeps your Markdown files plain and portable, while adding a focused writing interface for drafting novels, web fiction, worldbuilding notes, serial chapters, and any text that wants to grow into a small universe.

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Latest Version

0.1.8
6 days ago

Changelog

Watermelon Workbench 0.1.8

A focused writing workspace for novelists and long-form writers in Obsidian.

Added

  • Added a persistent toolbar toggle for automatic Chinese-style first-line paragraph indentation.
  • The indentation preference is saved and restored across sessions.

Improved

  • Preserved manually entered indentation and normal line breaks when automatic indentation is disabled.
  • Improved editor height and scrolling behavior.
  • Fixed excessive blank space appearing below the editor when scrolling down.

Included features

  • Chapter navigation, creation, renaming, and safe deletion.
  • Customizable font, font size, and line height.
  • Live writing statistics.
  • Local random name generator.
  • Time Machine backups and version comparison.
  • Comfortable cursor scrolling for long-form writing.

Compatibility

  • Requires Obsidian 1.6.6 or later.
See all version on GitHub

README file from

Github

🍉 Watermelon Workbench

给 Obsidian 小说作者的一张“西瓜味写作桌”：左边放章节，中间专心写，右边放灵感工具和码字仪表盘。

Watermelon Workbench is a cozy long-form writing workspace for Obsidian. It keeps your Markdown files plain and portable, while adding a focused writing interface for drafting novels, web fiction, worldbuilding notes, serial chapters, and any text that wants to grow into a small universe.

如果你经常在 Obsidian 里写小说，却觉得默认编辑器像一张太宽的白纸、章节跳转不够顺手、临时角色名又总卡壳——欢迎把这颗西瓜切开。

✨ Features

🧘 Focused writing workbench

  • Opens the current Markdown file in a dedicated writing view.
  • Exits back to Obsidian's normal Markdown editor without spawning extra tabs.
  • Comfortable typography controls: font family, font size, and line height.
  • Auto-scrolls near the bottom so the cursor stays in a comfortable writing zone.

📚 Chapter navigation

  • Shows sibling Markdown files as a chapter list.
  • Switch chapters without leaving the workbench.
  • Supports sorting by path/name or modified time.

✍️ Writing-friendly indentation

  • Use the top-toolbar “首行缩进” button to choose whether Enter automatically starts the next line at a Chinese-style first-line indent position.
  • The indent is for the workbench writing experience; saved Markdown stays clean.
  • Legacy full-width indent characters inserted by earlier builds are normalized when opening files.

🎲 Local random name generator

No API key. No network request. No waiting for the cloud muse to wake up.

Generate and insert:

  • Chinese character names
  • English names
  • Two-character or three-character Chinese names
  • Ancient-style or modern-style place names

Click a generated name to insert it into your draft.

🕰 Time Machine backups

For when chapter 7 takes a wrong turn into a swamp.

  • Automatically creates a backup snapshot every ~100 new non-space characters.
  • Stores backups in a 备份 folder next to your chapter file.
  • View added/removed lines between a snapshot and the current draft.
  • Restore a snapshot; the current draft is backed up first before restoration.

📊 Compact live stats

A small right-side dashboard tracks the essentials:

  • Session words / typing speed
  • Writing time / idle time
  • Total characters / non-space characters
  • Chapter count / total novel word count across the current folder

📦 Installation

Manual installation

  1. Download or build the plugin files.

  2. Copy these files into your Obsidian vault plugin folder:

    <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/watermelon-workbench/
├── main.js
├── manifest.json
└── styles.css

  3. Restart Obsidian or reload plugins.

  4. Enable Watermelon Workbench in Settings → Community plugins.

Build from source

npm install
npm run build

For development watch mode:

npm run dev

Type-check only:

npm run typecheck

🚀 Usage

After enabling the plugin, use one of these entry points:

  • Ribbon icon: Open Watermelon Workbench
  • Command palette:
    • Open writing workbench
    • Open current file in writing workbench
    • Exit writing workbench

Inside the workbench:

  • Left panel: chapter list
  • Center: focused editor
  • Right panel: plugin box + live stats
  • Esc or the toolbar exit button returns to normal Obsidian editing

🧃 Philosophy

Watermelon Workbench tries to be a writing table, not a writing prison.

Your novel remains Markdown. Your backups are Markdown. Your random names are local. The plugin is there to make drafting feel smoother, not to trap your manuscript in a mysterious proprietary watermelon crate.

🗂 Project structure

src/
├── main.ts                         # Obsidian plugin lifecycle and commands
├── settings.ts                     # Settings schema and settings tab
├── services/
│   ├── RandomNameService.ts        # Local name/place generation
│   ├── StatsService.ts             # Writing statistics
│   └── TimeMachineService.ts       # Snapshot, diff, restore helpers
├── utils/
│   └── formatting.ts               # Toolbar text transforms
└── views/
    └── WorkbenchView.ts            # Main workbench UI

🛣 Roadmap ideas

  • Better theme presets for different writing moods
  • Search inside chapter scope
  • More local name packs and worldbuilding generators
  • Export/release packaging automation
  • Optional per-project writing goals

🤝 Contributing

Issues, ideas, and pull requests are welcome.

If you find a bug, it helps to include:

  • Obsidian version
  • Plugin version
  • Operating system
  • A short reproduction step list
  • Whether it happens in a fresh vault

📄 License

MIT License. See LICENSE.

Made for people who open a blank chapter, stare at it for 20 minutes, then suddenly write 3,000 words because the fake character name finally sounded right. 🍉

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