The computation layer for your vault.
Solenoid turbocharges your Obsidian notes with real spreadsheet capabilities. You can manage frontmatter properties, read TaskNotes data, and insert values into your notes via Knap + Reports. The Solenoid Properties plugin puts lists, tables, frames and cubes into Obsidian's properties, edited in Solenoid's own table editor.
New to Solenoid? It is a visual alternative to Excel: values flow through cards on a canvas, and every Excel function works by its own name. This page covers the Obsidian side.
Solenoid Properties, the plugin
An Obsidian plugin that adds Solenoid's value types to your properties. Each one shows as a chip and opens Solenoid's editor, and the note underneath stays plain YAML.
The plugin's own chips and editor, over the demo vault's Property types note. Open one, change a cell and save; the YAML follows.
The Solenoid look
Turn on the plugin's theme and the whole vault takes Solenoid's palette, with the accent you pick.
Thirteen property types
A list and a matrix for each of numbers, text, dates, complex numbers and booleans, plus Frame, Cube and a Complex value.
Plain YAML underneath
A list saves as a sequence, a matrix as rows, a frame as rows of key: value. Without the plugin, the note still reads.
In Bases too
A Bases table shows the same chip, and opens the same editor.
Stays on your machine
No network access and no telemetry. Settings and column types live in the plugin's own data file.
Solenoid, the app
The app reads the vault as tables, computes like a spreadsheet, and writes the answers back as properties, notes and tasks.
This graph is live. Edit an input and everything downstream recomputes, or open the report to read the note it writes.
Between your vault and Excel
Reading the vault
Your vault as a table
A folder of notes, read as one table.
Import a note
Pick a note from your vault and Solenoid shows it on the canvas, with every frontmatter property as a value you can use as an input. The plugin's types come through: a Frame arrives as a frame, with the column types you picked.
TaskNotes API and .mdbase
Solenoid reads task and calendar data from the local TaskNotes HTTP API, and reads .mdbase schemas to type values where it can.
Writing it back
Update note properties
Each column becomes a properly typed property, so dates, lists and links come out right. With the plugin, a table written back opens as a chip in the note.
Create notes and reports
As portable markdown, with frontmatter, tables, diagrams, math and chart images baked in.
Create and update tasks
From a table: a row matched to an existing task updates it, a new row creates one.
Examples
Rank what to do next
Score each task by priority, due date and estimate, then write the score back so a Bases view sorts your list by it.
Trend your daily notes
Read the Daily folder, where the file name becomes a date and mood, sleep and weight become columns. Chart the trend and count streaks.
Roll up a folder
Sum budgets by status across a folder of project notes, count the open tasks in each, and write the totals into a summary note.
Bring a spreadsheet in
Join a CSV of expenses against your project notes, then write a per-project total back to each one.
Excel too, over CSV
Export a sheet to CSV and Solenoid reads it as a table with columns typed for you, then sends a table back out as CSV for Excel to open. The functions you know come along: Solenoid keeps Excel's names and Excel's answers.
Preview every change
Every writer shows you a plan before it touches a file. Nothing is written until you approve it.
Your notes change the way you would change them by hand, and a value that does not fit its type is refused rather than written.
Getting started
Free and open source. Point it at your vault and start computing.