Obsidian Vaults Overview Dashboard

A premium, local, self-contained web dashboard to oversee, monitor, and search across multiple Obsidian vaults from a single interface.

[!IMPORTANT] The server dynamically resolves your workspace configuration using config.local.json to identify the VaultsDir (which points to 1019-subject). It then scans the subdirectories inside that directory (skipping folders starting with . or _ and any folders matching paths in your ignore settings).

Example folder structure
01_Obsidian_Vaults/
├── config.local.json
├── 1019-subject/
│   ├── 03-system-ingestion/
│   ├── 11-personal/
│   │   ├── 11-01-pkm/
│   │   └── 11-02-career-and-jobs/
│   └── 12-gaming/
│       ├── 12-01-games-battletech/
│       └── 12-02-games-world-of-greyhawk/
└── 2029-automation/
    └── 23_utility_apps/
        └── dashboard/

This dashboard is designed to run locally on your machine and treats all your Obsidian vault directories as 100% read-only, ensuring no notes, configurations, or files are ever modified or corrupted.

📸 Click to view dashboard previews

✨ Features

• 📊 Unified Vault Statistics: Displays total vault counts, note counts (.md), media files (.png, .jpg, .pdf, etc.), and total disk storage usage across all active vaults in a central location.
• 📝 Local Vault Descriptions: Add, edit, and save custom descriptions directly on each vault card. To respect the strict read-only nature of your vaults, descriptions are stored in a local, git-ignored configuration file (vault-descriptions.json), keeping your descriptions strictly private to your machine.
• 📈 Notes Distribution Chart: Interactive bar chart displaying notes count across all vaults using a logarithmic scale to elegantly balance visual disparities (e.g. tracking a vault with 700 notes next to one with 5 notes).
• 🔗 Click-to-Open Obsidian URIs: Click on a chart bar or card to launch that vault inside the Obsidian app immediately using path-based URIs (obsidian://open?path=...), bypassing pre-registration errors.
• 📋 Path Copy Fallbacks: Includes one-click copy buttons next to all vaults and notes to copy absolute paths instantly to your clipboard.
• 🔍 Global Cross-Vault Search: A powerful search bar to query terms across all markdown notes in all vaults simultaneously, displaying matching titles, locations, and snippets with query term highlights.
• ⏳ Recent Edits Timeline: Displays a chronological feed of the most recently modified files across all vaults.
• 📁 Folding Collapsible Cards: Collapse sections (Active Vaults, Chart, Recent Edits, Global Search) by clicking their headers to optimize dashboard space.
• 🎨 Premium UI: Dark-mode glassmorphic interface built using harmonized HSL color variables, Outfit/Inter typography, responsive grid alignments, and subtle animations.

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🛠️ Tech Stack

• Backend: Node.js (Express) to scan vault folders, cache statistics in memory, index markdown file paths, and serve API endpoints.
• Frontend: Single-page application using modern HTML5 semantic markup, custom Vanilla CSS, and JavaScript.
• Libraries: Chart.js (via CDN) for data visualization.

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Prerequisites

• Make sure you have Node.js installed (v18+ recommended).
• Tested Environments: Windows 10/11 (PowerShell 7).

2. Installation & Setup

The dashboard is pre-integrated into your workspace at 2029-automation/23_utility_apps/dashboard/.

To install dependencies, open your terminal inside the dashboard folder and run:

cd 2029-automation/23_utility_apps/dashboard/
npm install

3. Run the Server

Start the local server:

npm start

The server will scan your configured vaults directory (skipping folders starting with . or _ and ignoring any paths defined in your ignore filters) and start hosting the API.

4. Open the Dashboard

Open your browser and navigate to: http://localhost:3000

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⚙️ Running in the Background on Startup

If you want the dashboard to always run automatically in the background when your computer boots up, refer to the platform-specific guides in the startup directory.

🗺️ Roadmap & Changelog

🚀 Released

• v0.2.1 — Documentation & Asset Cleanup
  • 🧹 Deleted unused assets/folder-structure.jpg asset.
  • 📝 Fixed formatting of callouts and notes in README.md.
  • 📁 Added detailed folder structure guide and installation steps.
  • ⚙️ Added local dev_notes/ folder to .gitignore.
• v0.2.0 — Editable Local Vault Descriptions
  • ✨ Implemented editable description cards utilizing a local, git-ignored vault-descriptions.json storage model to protect vault privacy.
  • 📝 Documented local vault customization features in the master layout.
• v0.1.0 — Initial Development Baseline
  • 📊 Built core dashboard rendering multi-vault tracking statistics.
  • 📈 Implemented logarithmic scale charts via Chart.js for balanced note distribution views.
  • 🔗 Integrated path-based Obsidian URIs (obsidian://open?path=...) for instant, error-free vault switching.
  • 🔍 Added global cross-vault markdown query search engine.

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⏳ Upcoming Features

• Add Automated Release Pipeline: Implement automated version tagging and release generation using GitHub Actions workflows.
• Add Media File Count: Add media file count to the dashboard.
• Add Folder Blacklist Filter: Add a configuration option to manually exclude specific folder paths from cross-vault scanning.
• Add File Extension Exclusions: Implement rules to filter out system meta-files (e.g., .DS_Store) from media totals.
• Add Mobile-Responsive Optimization: Refine glassmorphic CSS grids to adapt fluidly across mobile and tablet viewports.
• Add Obsidian Plugin Integration: Long-term exploration into compiling this into a native Obsidian community plugin wrapper.