Scriptorium Nostr

An Obsidian plugin for creating, editing, and publishing Nostr document events directly from your vault.

Author: Silberengel
Homepage of our development project: https://gitcitadel.com
Happy to receive Bitcoin-tips to our Lightning wallet: gitcitadel@getalby.com

Features

• Multiple event kinds: Markdown (1, 11, 30023, 30817) and AsciiDoc (30040, 30041, 30818) formats
• Automatic book/publication parsing into nested 30040/30041 structures
• Metadata stored in Markdown frontmatter and AsciiDoc header attributes
• Structure preview before creating events
• Two-step workflow: create/sign events separately from publishing
• Automatic relay list fetching (kind 10002) with AUTH support
• NIP-54 compliant d-tag normalization

Installation

Quick Start

Use the startup script to build, install, and launch Obsidian:

# First run (path required)
./start-obsidian.sh ~/Documents/MyVault

# Subsequent runs (path is saved)
./start-obsidian.sh

The script automatically:

• Installs npm dependencies
• Builds and installs the plugin
• Installs and enables obsidian-asciidoc (required for .adoc files)
• Starts Obsidian with console logging

Generate a new Nostr key:

./start-obsidian.sh --generate-key

Add the shown export command to your shell profile (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, etc.).

Manual Installation

1. Clone repo → npm install → npm run build
2. Copy main.js and manifest.json to .obsidian/plugins/scriptorium-obsidian/
3. Enable in Obsidian Settings → Community Plugins
4. Install obsidian-asciidoc plugin (required for .adoc files)

Setup

Private Key

The plugin only loads keys from the SCRIPTORIUM_OBSIDIAN_KEY environment variable:

# Set in terminal
export SCRIPTORIUM_OBSIDIAN_KEY="nsec1..."

# Make permanent (add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc)
echo 'export SCRIPTORIUM_OBSIDIAN_KEY="nsec1..."' >> ~/.bashrc

Important: Launch Obsidian from the terminal where the variable is set, or use the startup script. Desktop shortcuts won't have access to the variable.

Relays

1. Open Settings → Scriptorium Nostr
2. Click "Fetch" to get your relay list from Nostr relays
3. Relays are automatically fetched from default relays

Usage

Creating Events

1. Open a Markdown or AsciiDoc file
2. Run: Create Nostr Events
3. Events are created, signed, and saved to {filename}_events.jsonl

Publishing

1. Ensure events exist ({filename}_events.jsonl)
2. Run: Publish Events to Relays
3. Events publish to all configured write relays

Other Commands

• Edit Metadata - Open metadata form for current file
• Preview Document Structure - Show event hierarchy (AsciiDoc only)

File Formats

• Markdown (.md): Kinds 1, 11, 30023, 30817
• AsciiDoc (.adoc): Kinds 30040, 30041, 30818
• Structured AsciiDoc (starts with = Title): Kind 30040 with nested 30041 events

Metadata

Metadata is stored directly in the file:

• Markdown files: YAML frontmatter at the top of the file (between --- markers)
• AsciiDoc files: Header attributes (lines starting with :key: value) after the title

When publishing, metadata is automatically stripped from the content before creating events.

Example Markdown frontmatter:

---
kind: 30023
title: "My Article"
author: "Author Name"
summary: "Article summary"
---

Example AsciiDoc attributes:

= Book Title

:kind: 30040
:author: Author Name
:type: book
:summary: Book description

Development

npm install
npm run dev    # Watch mode
npm run build  # Production build

License

MIT