Obsidian Jekyll Publish

An Obsidian plugin that publishes the active note as a Jekyll blog post via git. Images are copied alongside the post using one of two configurable strategies, and credentials are handled by your system git — nothing is stored inside Obsidian.

What it does

1. Opens a "Publish to Jekyll" modal for the currently active markdown file.
2. Lets you confirm or adjust the slug, date, frontmatter, image strategy, and commit message.
3. Clones (or updates) your Jekyll site repository into a temporary directory.
4. Writes the post as _posts/<date>-<slug>.md (or your configured path).
5. Copies any embedded images according to the selected strategy.
6. Commits and pushes to your configured remote and branch.

Installation

1. Build the plugin (see Development below) or download the release assets.
2. Copy dist/main.js, dist/manifest.json, and dist/styles.css into:

   <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/jekyll-publish/
   

3. Reload Obsidian and enable Jekyll Publish under Settings → Community plugins.

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Remote URL	Git remote URL for your Jekyll site (HTTPS or SSH)	(empty)
Branch	Branch to push to	main
Posts directory	Destination directory inside the repo	_posts
Images directory	Where images are copied inside the repo	assets/img
Default image strategy	flat-slug or per-post-folder (see below)	flat-slug
Preset frontmatter	Key/value pairs always injected into every post	(empty)
Commit message template	Template; {{title}} is replaced by the note title	Publish: {{title}}
Author name	Git author name for commits	(empty)
Author email	Git author email for commits	(empty)

Image strategies

flat-slug — all images for the post are copied flat into <images-dir>/ and renamed to <slug>-<original-name>. Keeps the images directory shallow; suitable for sites with few images per post.

per-post-folder — images are copied into <images-dir>/<slug>/ preserving their original filenames. Keeps each post's images grouped together; suitable for posts with many images.

Credentials model

The plugin uses your system git binary for all remote operations. No passwords or tokens are stored inside Obsidian or the plugin's data files.

When git needs a credential (e.g. HTTPS password or a personal access token), an askpass bridge intercepts the prompt and shows a native Obsidian modal so you can type the value. The value is passed directly to git through a temporary socket and is never persisted.

For SSH remotes, the plugin relies on your existing SSH agent or ~/.ssh key configuration — no extra steps needed.

Development

Requirements

• Node.js 20+
• npm

Build

npm install
npm run build
# Output: dist/main.js  dist/manifest.json  dist/styles.css

Unit tests

npm test

Runs the Vitest suite (frontmatter parsing, slug derivation, image path logic, git helpers, publish pipeline).

E2E tests

The E2E suite boots the real Obsidian binary in a headless X display and drives it via the Chrome DevTools Protocol.

Prerequisites:

• xvfb-run on PATH (install: sudo apt install xvfb)
• Obsidian AppImage placed at ~/.cache/obsidian-e2e/Obsidian.AppImage (download from https://obsidian.md/download)

npm run e2e

The script:

1. Extracts the AppImage (once, cached).
2. Provisions a throwaway vault at .obsidian-e2e/ with the plugin installed.
3. Launches Obsidian with --remote-debugging-port and connects Playwright over CDP.
4. Runs the smoke spec: plugin loads, command jekyll-publish:publish-current-note is registered, opening a note and executing the command shows a modal with heading "Publish to Jekyll".

The .obsidian-e2e/ directory and Playwright test-results/ are excluded from git.