bitsofchris_openaugi-obsidian-plugin/README.md

OpenAugi

Voice to Self-Organizing Second Brain for Obsidian

Unlock the power of voice capture and go faster.

Open Augi ("auggie") is an open source augmented intelligence plugin for Obsidian. It's designed for people who like to think out loud (like me).

Just capture your voice note, drop hints to Augi, and let Open Augi's agentic workflow process your note into a self-organizing second brain for you.

This is designed to run in a separate folder within your vault. Any agentic actions taken on existing notes, not created by Augi, will be sent to you for review.

Let Open Augi process and organize your thoughts so you can go further, faster.

Join the Discord. Parent repo.

Setup

1. Install the plugin from the Obsidian Community Plugins or manually
2. Go to Settings → OpenAugi
3. Enter your OpenAI API key
4. Set your preferred folders for summaries and atomic notes
5. Save settings

Main Commands

OpenAugi offers two primary commands:

1. Parse Transcript

This command processes a voice transcript or any text and organizes it into atomic notes, tasks, and a summary.

Usage:

1. Import your voice transcript into Obsidian as a markdown file
2. Open the transcript file
3. Hit CMD+P (or CTRL+P on Windows/Linux) to open the command palette
4. Run OpenAugi: Parse Transcript

The plugin will:

• Break down your transcript into separate atomic notes (1 idea per note)
• Extract any tasks mentioned
• Create a summary note with links to the atomic notes
• Link related concepts automatically

Special Commands in Transcripts: Using "auggie" as a special token during your voice note can improve accuracy of the agentic behaviors.

• Say "auggie this is a task" to explicitly mark something as a task
• Say "auggie make a new note about X" to create a specific note
• Say "auggie summarize this" to get a summary of recent thoughts
• Say "auggie this is a journal entry" to format text as a journal entry

2. Distill Linked Notes

This command analyzes a set of linked notes and synthesizes them into a coherent set of atomic notes.

Usage:

1. Create a root note that links to other notes you want to distill
   • Links can be regular Obsidian links like [[Note Name]]
   • You can also use dataview queries (if the dataview plugin is installed)
2. Open this root note
3. Hit CMD+P (or CTRL+P on Windows/Linux) to open the command palette
4. Run OpenAugi: Distill Linked Notes

The plugin will:

• Gather all linked notes
• Analyze their content together
• Create new atomic notes that synthesize and organize the information
• Generate a summary that connects the key concepts
• Extract any actionable tasks found across the notes

3. Distill Recent Activity

This command automatically discovers and distills notes that have been recently modified, perfect for daily/weekly reviews.

Usage:

1. Hit CMD+P (or CTRL+P on Windows/Linux) to open the command palette
2. Run OpenAugi: Distill Recent Activity
3. Configure your preferences in the modal:
   • Days to look back: How many days of activity to include (default: 7)
   • Filter journal sections: For journal-style notes with date headers, only include recent sections
   • Root note: Optionally specify a note to provide additional context
   • Exclude folders: Skip folders like Templates or Archive

The plugin will:

• Automatically find all notes modified within your specified time window
• For journal-style notes with date headers (e.g., ### 2024-01-20), extract only recent sections
• Synthesize the recent activity into organized atomic notes
• Create a comprehensive summary of your recent work

Custom Context

You can guide how OpenAugi processes your content by adding a custom context section to your notes:

Only extract items related to project goals and key decisions.
Focus on extracting the "why" behind each decision.

For Transcript Parsing: Add this section to your transcript file before processing.

For Distillation: Add this section to your root note before running the distill command.

Example Use Cases:

• Focus only on extracting research findings and methodology details
• Extract only content related to project risks and mitigation strategies
• Identify and highlight conflicting viewpoints across these notes
• Focus on extracting personal insights and reflections, ignoring factual content

The custom context allows you to narrow the focus of processing to extract specific types of information relevant to your current needs.

Use Cases

Daily/Weekly Reviews

Use "Distill Recent Activity" to automatically summarize your work:

• Set to 1 day for daily reviews
• Set to 7 days for weekly reviews
• Automatically captures all your recent thoughts and work
• Perfect for identifying patterns and progress

Project Summaries

Use "Distill Linked Notes" with a project hub note:

• Create a note that links to all project-related notes
• Run distillation to get a comprehensive project overview
• Extract all tasks and decisions across the project

Research Synthesis

Combine both commands for research workflows:

• Use "Distill Recent Activity" to review recent research notes
• Use "Distill Linked Notes" on topic-specific collections
• Add custom context to focus on findings, methodologies, or insights

Journal Processing

Take advantage of journal-style note support:

• Keep daily journal entries with date headers
• Use "Distill Recent Activity" to extract recent insights
• Only relevant date sections are processed, keeping context focused

Requirements

Note: this requires an OpenAI API key to work.

Your content is sent directly to OpenAI for processing using the best model for this task. The cost to use this plugin depends on the API credits consumed. For me ~5 minutes of voice note is about 2-3 cents of processing.

Configuration Settings

OpenAugi provides several configuration options in Settings → OpenAugi:

Basic Settings

• OpenAI API Key: Your API key for processing (required)
• Summaries Folder: Where summary files are saved (default: OpenAugi/Summaries)
• Notes Folder: Where atomic notes are saved (default: OpenAugi/Notes)
• Use Dataview: Enable processing of dataview queries in distillation

Recent Activity Settings

Configure defaults for the "Distill Recent Activity" command:

• Default Days to Look Back: How many days of activity to include by default (default: 7)
• Filter Journal Sections: When enabled, only includes recent sections from journal-style notes
• Date Header Format: Customize the format for date headers in journal notes (default: ### YYYY-MM-DD)
  • Examples: ## DD/MM/YYYY, #### YYYY.MM.DD, ### [YYYY-MM-DD]
  • Must include YYYY (year), MM (month), and DD (day) placeholders
• Exclude Folders: Comma-separated list of folders to skip (default: Templates, Archive, OpenAugi)

Advanced Settings

• Enable Distill Logging: Logs the full context sent to AI for debugging (saved to OpenAugi/Logs)

Journal-Style Notes Support

OpenAugi has special support for journal-style notes that use date headers. When processing recent activity:

1. Automatic Detection: Notes with date headers matching your configured format are automatically detected
2. Smart Filtering: Only sections with dates within your specified time window are included
3. Flexible Formats: Configure your preferred date header format in settings

Example journal note:

# My Journal

### 2024-01-20
Today's thoughts and activities...

### 2024-01-19
Yesterday's reflections...

### 2024-01-10
Older content that may be filtered out...

When using "Distill Recent Activity" with a 7-day window, only the recent sections would be processed.

Output Structure

OpenAugi creates two types of files:

1. Summary files - Placed in your designated summary folder, containing:

   • A concise summary of the content
   • Links to all atomic notes
   • Tasks extracted from the content
   • For distilled notes: Links to source notes

2. Atomic notes - Placed in your designated notes folder, each containing:

   • A single, self-contained idea
   • Context and supporting details
   • Backlinks to related notes where relevant

Get involved, let's build augmented intelligence

This plugin is meant to solve my own problems around using Obsidian as my second brain and AI for organizing my notes.

Augmented intelligence is using AI to help you think faster and do more. Not to write and think for you. But rather to support and augment what you are capable of.

Open an issue, join the Discord, and check out my YouTube to give feedback on how this works for you or what you'd like to see next. Read more at the parent repo.