mdsmith for Obsidian

Install the mdsmith Obsidian plugin and use its inline diagnostics, hover fixes, fix-on-save, and diagnostics panel — one WebAssembly runtime on desktop and mobile.

The mdsmith plugin runs the linter inside an Obsidian vault. It uses the same rule engine as mdsmith check on the command line and in CI, so a note that is clean as you edit is clean in the pipeline. The engine is compiled to WebAssembly, so one runtime works on every platform Obsidian supports — desktop, iPadOS, iOS, and Android.

The plugin is not in the Obsidian community catalog. Install it from the GitHub release zip, as the Install section describes.

# What you get

# As you write

Inline diagnostics. Every rule violation shows as a wavy underline in the editor. Hover an underline for the issue. The same checks run in CI , so the editor never disagrees with the build.

Hover for the fix. The hover tooltip leads with the message, then the schema constraint a value violated (a link you can click to jump to the constraint, when it has a source location), then the rule code and a documentation link. A Fix link applies the matching quick-fix.

Per-line fix commands. Each rule on the cursor line registers a transient mdsmith: Fix — {code} command in the palette. The set clears when the cursor moves, so the palette only offers the rules you can act on right now.

Fix file. Run mdsmith: Fix file to rewrite the active note — trailing whitespace, heading style, code fences, bare URLs, list indentation, and table alignment — in one edit.

Fix on save. Turn on Fix on save (off by default) and the plugin runs Fix file 200 ms after each save. Setting Run mode to off suppresses it.

# Across your vault

Diagnostics panel. Open the mdsmith Diagnostics panel for a table of the diagnostics from the notes you have checked or opened this session. It does not scan the whole vault up front. Click a row to jump to its source.

Cross-file checks. Because the plugin holds one session over the whole vault, cross-file rules see every note. Broken links and a catalog that drifted out of date surface as diagnostics, the same as any style error.

# Without extra setup

One bundled runtime. The release zip ships the engine as a single .wasm file. There is no subprocess to spawn, no native binary to load, and no PATH lookup — so the plugin runs in Obsidian’s sandboxed mobile WebView, where all three are blocked. manifest.json does not set isDesktopOnly.

# Install

Each release attaches mdsmith-obsidian-<version>.zip to the GitHub release . To install it:

1. Download mdsmith-obsidian-<version>.zip from the release page.
2. Create the folder <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/mdsmith/.
3. Unzip the five files into that folder: main.js, manifest.json, styles.css, mdsmith.wasm, and wasm_exec.js.
4. In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins, then enable mdsmith.

This vault-relative path is the same on every OS. The .obsidian folder is hidden, though. Rather than browse to it, open the plugins folder from Settings → Community plugins — the folder icon by Installed plugins — and drop the unzipped files there.

You need Obsidian 1.5 or later. A config file is optional: mdsmith lints with built-in defaults, so the plugin works as soon as you enable it. To tune the rules, add a .mdsmith.yml to the vault root and the plugin discovers it automatically — no setting to change. To load a config from another location, set the Config path setting to its vault-relative path.

# Settings

Open Settings → Community plugins → mdsmith.

runMode controls when diagnostics refresh. onType re-lints on each edit; onSave re-lints only when you save; off stops automatic linting and suppresses fix-on-save. fixOnSave is subordinate to runMode: when runMode is off, a save never rewrites the note.

Changing configPath rebuilds the lint session over the new config. To rebuild it by hand — after editing the config file in place, for example — run the mdsmith: Restart session command.

# Troubleshooting

The engine fails to load. A notice reports the error on startup. Confirm all five files sit directly in <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/mdsmith/ — main.js, manifest.json, styles.css, mdsmith.wasm, and wasm_exec.js. A missing mdsmith.wasm or wasm_exec.js is the usual cause. Re-unzip the release and reload the plugin. If the notice instead reads parsing config file: …, your .mdsmith.yml has a syntax error — the engine refuses an invalid config rather than linting on defaults — so fix the YAML and run mdsmith: Restart session.

No diagnostics appear. Check that Run mode is not off. With onSave, diagnostics refresh only when you save the note. Open and re-save the file to force a re-lint.

The config is not applied. With Config path empty, the plugin loads a .mdsmith.yml only from the vault root — confirm the file sits there, not in a subfolder. An unreadable Config path reports a notice and falls back to the engine defaults. Confirm the path is vault-relative and the file exists, then run mdsmith: Restart session. After editing a discovered config in place, run mdsmith: Restart session too — the session compiles config once at startup.

# See also

• mdsmith check and mdsmith fix — the CLI surfaces the plugin reuses
• Obsidian convention — pin convention: obsidian for wikilink and callout checks
• mdsmith for VS Code — the same engine in a different editor
• Markdown linter comparison — how mdsmith compares to Obsidian’s own plugins