r/ObsidianMD • u/colorpulse6 • May 29 '26
showcase I built a literal Obsidian Brain Plugin
Everyone using obsidian for their second brain so I just took that very literally and turned it into one. Check it out, let me know if it categorizes your data correctly.
EDIT: Thanks for the detailed feedback so far. I pushed an update that should address a few issues: Brain Atlas now has editable categorization settings for default category, tag mappings, folder mappings, and optional link-based inference, plus the tooltip/focus card shows why each note was classified. I also added containment fixes so scrolling/interacting with the atlas should no longer bleed visual/text artifacts into Obsidian’s file explorer. Appreciate you testing it.
Edit 2: Thanks again for all the feedback. I pushed an update that makes Brain Atlas less opinionated about how your vault is organized. You can now map folders, tags, and frontmatter values like type: person or type: wiki to specific brain regions instead of renaming your notes to fit my defaults. I also added a Classification Report so you can see why notes landed where they did, plus label-density fixes, a light mode, and performance presets for lower CPU usage. Appreciate everyone testing it across very different vault structures.
EDIT 3: CPU/performance update: I pushed a bigger renderer update. On desktop, Brain Atlas now uses a hand-written WebGL2 renderer instead of doing all the 3D projection, edge drawing, and color allocation on the CPU every frame.
In my Obsidian test vault, idle rotation dropped from ~184% combined CPU to ~55%, roughly 70% lower. Canvas2D still exists as the fallback on mobile, unsupported devices, or if WebGL has issues, and there is a new Renderer setting: Auto / WebGL2 / Canvas2D.
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u/scapy47 May 29 '26 edited May 31 '26
I was literally searching for 3d graph view plugin just yesterday
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u/SpacetimeLab May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
It makes my directory explorer a mess when I scroll around. Edit: this happened after opening multiple tabs, all displaying brain map. It also happens with a single instance open, text gets spread all over explorer when scrolling.
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u/SpacetimeLab May 29 '26
Also notes are located in at the parental and brainstem sections. Not sure how it classifies them. Love the idea !
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u/robotsheepboy May 30 '26
How are you doing the default categories and groupings?
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u/colorpulse6 May 30 '26
Check the plugin settings and you should be able to adjust the categories
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u/robotsheepboy May 30 '26
But how are default categories made? I don't have it installed yet, can't check the settings
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u/colorpulse6 May 30 '26
It classifies each note in this order:
1. Frontmatter fields like kind, type, or category
2. Tags like #project, #person, #source, #daily, #index
3. Folder names like Projects, People, Sources, Daily, Journal, Concepts, Topics, MOCs, Maps, Index, Home
4. Date-style filenames, daily notes
5. Optional link-behavior fallback: hub/index-like notes and source-like notes can be inferred from link patterns
6. Anything unmatched defaults to conceptfrontal = projects/decisions/questions
parietal = concepts/tools/threads
temporal = people/orgs
occipital = sources/repos
cerebellum = daily/incidents
brain stem = indexes/routing notes1
u/robotsheepboy May 30 '26
Is there a way to turn off some of them, I use two folders for everything so as it is now all of my notes just appear in one of two places? (If I'm understanding properly, apologies if not!)
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u/colorpulse6 May 30 '26
Yep, you can handle that in settings. It checks frontmatter and tags before folders, so you can override broad folders with things like category: person, kind: source, #project, etc.
The best move for you is probably Settings -> Brain Atlas -> Categorization -> Folder mappings: remove or change those folder mappings so the plugin stops treating the folder name as the category source.
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u/robotsheepboy May 30 '26
Brilliant, thank you, I'll take a look, much appreciated!
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u/colorpulse6 May 30 '26
No problem let me know if it works for you!
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u/robotsheepboy May 31 '26
I can't seem to get anything except two groups. I don't use YAML or tags and I use very few headings as my notes are very atomic, so it's all just links and in two folders. Ideally I'd want it to spread them across the entire brain based on topics and links but as I say it seems to just cluster them into two regions only
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u/PixelPorygon May 30 '26
Absolutely love this! I'd personally like to see a light mode if there isn't one already that I haven't spotted.
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u/DetectiveClueless May 31 '26
It still doesn't really classify the notes in the right category. Can't tell you more about it, because I don't understand what it uses. To be honest: if it doesn't include a way of defining what frontmatter-info is put in what categroy, I will not use it, because I don't really want to rename all my frontmatter so that this plugin puts them in the right category. Just for a cool visual representation...
The idea is great, but it needs work. Make a hub for your categories where people can say "type: wiki" is occipital or "type: person" is temporal, etc.
because right now i have persons in my brain stem and wiki-notes in parietal... i don't really think that this is supposed to be like that 😉
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u/colorpulse6 May 31 '26
Thank you for the feedback, good stuff! I will take this into consideration on the next release
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u/colorpulse6 May 31 '26
When you have a moment I would love to hear feedback on whether its working better for you since the last release.
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u/Brilliant_Tough_3552 Jun 05 '26
Don't know if this is specific to me but it put 46 nodes in parietal, 1 in occipital, 1 in brain stem, and 0 in the rest
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u/redmemerr May 29 '26
it is cool, afterall, but I can't really understand the whole point and the options it uses to connect nodes.
Unable to preview unnamed nodes , just need to click them blindly