dsh-obsidian-memory

Store your agent's memory as plain Markdown in an Obsidian vault.

Every memory is a .md file with YAML frontmatter that Obsidian indexes natively — so you can read, edit, link and back up your agent's memory with tools you already use. Nothing is locked in a database.

Status: early but working. Host half (7 tools, 8 routes), sidebar panel, BM25 recall, decay/archiving and GitHub sync are all implemented and verified on DSH 0.2.1-rc.5.

What it does

• A sidebar panel — click the brain icon, browse memories, filter by tag, sort by recency or importance, read and edit in place.
• 7 agent tools — the model writes and reads its own memory without being told to.
• Recall with a token budget — three detail tiers (tiny / compact / detailed) pick preview length and keyword count so recall costs what you can afford, not what the vault weighs.
• BM25 ranking, no embeddings — works offline, needs no API key, no vector store, no model call. CJK bigram tokenization so Chinese queries work.
• Decay and archiving — old, unimportant, unreferenced memories fade; they are moved to Memories/.archive/, never deleted.
• GitHub sync — pushes changed notes through the Contents API so another machine can pull them back. Optional, off unless configured.
• Secrets are refused, not redacted — a note containing a token or password is skipped with a reason, because a redacted memory looks complete while being wrong.

Install

Install straight from this repository — no npm account or registry needed:

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-obsidian-memory@github:aoyamabf-max/dsh-obsidian-memory

Or pin a tag so an upgrade does not surprise you:

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-obsidian-memory@github:aoyamabf-max/dsh-obsidian-memory#v0.3.0

Replace web with your profile name if you use another one. Then restart DSH. The panel appears in the left sidebar; the tools appear to the agent immediately.

Manual install

If you would rather read the code before installing it:

git clone https://github.com/aoyamabf-max/dsh-obsidian-memory.git
cd dsh-obsidian-memory
dsh plugin --profile web add .

The package has no runtime dependencies of its own. Everything it imports — @deepseek-ai/schemastery, @deepseek-ai/cordis, the client UI packages — comes from the DSH host and is declared as a peer dependency.

Requirements

• DSH >=0.2.0-rc.1 <0.3.0-0. Declared as a peer range, so a mismatched host fails at install time instead of misbehaving later.
• @deepseek-ai/schemastery ^3.18.0 — ships with DSH, so you normally do not install it yourself.
• Obsidian — optional but that is the point. If Obsidian is installed, the vault is discovered from %APPDATA%\obsidian\obsidian.json (Windows) or ~/.config/obsidian/obsidian.json (Linux/macOS), preferring the vault currently open. You can also set vaultPath explicitly.

Configuration

All settings live in the plugin's Config schema, so they show up in DSH's own settings UI. Every field has a default; an empty config is valid.

Field	Default	Meaning
vaultPath	""	Absolute path to the vault. Empty = auto-discover from Obsidian.
folder	"Memories"	Subfolder for memory notes, relative to the vault root.
maxNoteBytes	262144	Notes longer than this are truncated (hard cap; raising it has no effect).
repo	""	owner/name to sync to. Empty = no sync.
branch	"main"	Branch to push to.
tokenFile	""	File holding a GitHub token. Empty = ~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory/token.
denyFile	""	Secret blacklist, one literal per line. Empty = ~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory/deny.txt.
syncEnabled	true	Whether the timer runs.
syncMinutes	30	Sync interval in minutes (minimum 5).
forgettingEnabled	false	Allow decay/archive to actually write. Preview works either way.
decayFactor	0.9	Multiplier applied per decay pass.
pruneThreshold	0.15	Below this importance, a note becomes eligible for archiving.

Setting up GitHub sync (optional)

1. Create a private repository. Memory can contain hostnames, paths and internal decisions.
2. Create a fine-grained token with Contents: read and write on that repo only.
3. Save it: mkdir -p ~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory && printf '%s' '<token>' > ~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory/token
4. Set repo to owner/name in the plugin config.

The token is never written into the plugin config or the repository. Sync state (a path → sha256 map) lives in ~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory/sync-state.json, so only changed notes are pushed.

Keeping secrets out

The plugin refuses to push a note containing a secret, and counts it under blocked rather than failed — the two mean different things. Two layers:

• Built-in patterns (ship with the code): github_pat_, gh[pousr]_, AKIA, sk-, BEGIN … PRIVATE KEY, 密码[:=是]….
• Your own blacklist at ~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory/deny.txt — one literal string per line, # for comments. Put your own server addresses, passwords and key names here. This file stays on your machine and is never read into the source tree.

The 7 tools

Tool	What it does
obsidian_remember	Write a new memory note.
obsidian_search	BM25 search over titles, tags and bodies.
obsidian_context	Assemble recall into a token budget; returns tiny/compact/detailed.
obsidian_read	Read one note by vault-relative path.
obsidian_update	Edit an existing note; keeps id and createdAt.
obsidian_forget	Preview or apply decay + archiving. Preview is the default.
obsidian_sync	Push changed notes to GitHub now.

The plugin also registers a system-prompt section telling the model when to write memory — long-term preferences, decisions and their reasons, pitfalls with the exact error text, machine-local facts (paths and ports, never credentials) — and when not to: one-off intermediates, anything readable from the code, casual remarks, discussions with no conclusion.

Files it creates

<vault>/Memories/mem-YYYYMMDD-HHmmss <title>.md   one memory
<vault>/Memories/.archive/…                       decayed memories (moved, never deleted)
~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory/token                  GitHub token (optional)
~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory/deny.txt               your secret blacklist (optional)
~/.dsh/dsh-obsidian-memory/sync-state.json        sync bookkeeping

Memories/.archive/ starts with a dot so Obsidian's graph and search skip it by default.

Design notes

• Markdown over a database. The vault is the source of truth. Uninstalling the plugin loses nothing — your memories are still notes.
• No embeddings. Vector recall needs an embedding service, which means a key, a network call and a bill. BM25 plus wikilink expansion is worse at paraphrase and better at everything else; it also never sends your memory anywhere.
• Refuse, don't redact. A redacted memory reads as complete while the important part is gone, and a rule that misses one secret leaves it in git history forever.
• Archive, don't delete. Pruning first scans every [[wikilink]] target and skips anything referenced, then moves the rest into .archive/. Nothing is unlinked.
• Frontmatter is rewritten whole. Every write must carry importance, level and accessCount forward or they silently reset to defaults. noteMetaNumbers() exists so both read paths share one fallback rule.

License

MIT