Graph Explorer Base View

An Obsidian plugin that renders notes from an Obsidian Base as an interactive force-directed graph. Visualize relationships between notes, track exploration progress, and navigate your knowledge base through an intuitive graph interface.

Key features

  • Interactive force-directed graph with drag, pan, zoom, and smooth animations
  • Exploration tracking via frontmatter property, with progress bar and coverage stats
  • Rich node visualization with color, size, and shape driven by note metadata (explored status, confidence, wiki role, tags, creation date, or any frontmatter property)
  • Side panel showing full rendered note content with interactive wikilinks
  • Search and filter by name, explored status, and more
  • Keyboard navigation for accessibility (Tab, Arrow keys, Enter, Escape)
  • Batch operations to toggle explored status on multiple notes at once
  • Frontier nodes showing unresolved links (notes that don’t exist yet)
  • Context menu with quick actions (open, mark explored, copy wikilink, batch select)
  • View presets for common workflows (LLM Wiki Explorer, Exploration Progress, Role Overview)

Installation

  1. In Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins.
  2. Disable Restricted mode if it’s enabled.
  3. Select Browse, search for Graph Explorer Base View, install it, then enable it.

You can also browse the catalog on the Obsidian Community website.

Manual installation

If the plugin isn’t listed in the community catalog yet (or you want a specific version):

  1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
  2. Copy them into <Vault>/.obsidian/plugins/graph-explorer-base-view/.
  3. Reload Obsidian and enable Graph Explorer Base View in Settings → Community plugins.

BRAT (bleeding edge)

BRAT (Beta Reviewers Auto-update Tool) installs plugins straight from a GitHub repo and keeps them updated automatically. Use this if you want the latest commits — things might break.

  1. Install Obsidian42 - BRAT from Settings → Community plugins → Browse and enable it.
  2. Run BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing from the command palette.
  3. Paste https://github.com/dsebastien/obsidian-graph-explorer-base-view.
  4. Select the latest version and confirm.
  5. Enable Graph Explorer Base View in Settings → Community plugins.

Quick start

  1. Install the plugin (see Installation above).
  2. Create a new Base in your vault (or open an existing one).
  3. Select Graph Explorer as the view type.
  4. Your notes appear as an interactive graph — click any node to see its content in the side panel.

About

Created by Sébastien Dubois.

My other Obsidian plugins

Plugin What it does
Agentic Resource Discovery Server Local-first Agentic Resource Discovery publisher and registry that serves your AI skills and tools to agents over a local HTTP and MCP server
Book Exporter Export books (one manifest note + linked chapter notes) to EPUB and PDF via Pandoc
Bookshelf Base Display your notes as a visual bookshelf via a custom Bases view
Dataview Serializer Serialize Dataview queries to Markdown, and keep the Markdown representation up to date
Expander Replace variables across your vault using HTML comment markers. Supports static values and dynamic functions
Ghost Publish Publish your vault notes to a Ghost blog with configurable presets for tags, newsletters, and frontmatter conventions
Hidden Folders Access Index hidden root-level folders (e.g. .claude) so they appear in the file tree, metadata cache, and Bases
Journal Bases Custom Base views for journaling and periodic reviews
Kanban Action Planner Render your notes as configurable Kanban boards and calendars inside Bases, with statuses, ordering, relationships, and scheduling
Life Tracker Capture and visualize the data that matters in your life
Note Village A 2D pixel art village where your notes become villagers you can explore and chat with using AI
Obsidian Starter Kit Adds strong typing support and powerful automation support for notes
Remarkable Synchronizer Connect to the reMarkable cloud, list, download, and sync notebook pages as images
Replicate Use AI models with ease via the Replicate.com integration
REST and MCP server Exposes CLI commands as RESTful API endpoints and an MCP server for AI tool integration
Time Machine Browse, compare, and restore previous versions of your notes using built-in file-recovery snapshots
Transcriber Transcribe images to markdown using Ollama vision models
Typefully Publish social media posts with ease using the Typefully integration
Update Time Automatically update front matter to include creation and last update times

Everything I build is documented in my newsletter and on my YouTube channel.

News & support

To stay up to date about this plugin, Obsidian in general, Personal Knowledge Management and note-taking:

If this plugin is useful to you, here are the best ways to support my work ❤️: