Brain Atlas

Brain Atlas is an Obsidian plugin that renders your vault as an animated 3D anatomical brain. Notes become nodes, links become neural pathways, and note types are grouped into brain regions.

The animated preview below uses synthetic demo vault data.

Features

• Animated 3D brain view inside Obsidian.
• Vault-native graph data from app.metadataCache; no separate app or export step.
• Region mapping for projects, people, concepts, sources, daily notes, indexes, and related note kinds.
• Region toggles for dimming or restoring anatomical lobes.
• Label toggle for hiding all canvas labels.
• Click a node to open the backing note.
• Local-only rendering. Brain Atlas does not send vault data to a server.

Install

Brain Atlas is not in the official Obsidian community plugin directory yet. Use BRAT or manual installation.

Option 1: Install with BRAT

1. Install the BRAT plugin from Obsidian's community plugins.

2. Open the command palette and run BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing.

3. Enter:

   https://github.com/colorpulse6/brain-atlas
   

4. Enable Brain Atlas in Settings -> Community plugins.

5. Open the command palette and run Brain Atlas: Open atlas.

Option 2: Manual Install

1. Download these files from the latest repo version or release:

   • manifest.json
   • main.js
   • styles.css

2. In your vault, create:

   .obsidian/plugins/brain-atlas/
   

3. Put the three downloaded files in that folder.

4. Reload Obsidian.

5. Enable Brain Atlas in Settings -> Community plugins.

6. Open the command palette and run Brain Atlas: Open atlas.

Option 3: Build from Source

npm install
npm test
npm run build
mkdir -p /path/to/your/vault/.obsidian/plugins/brain-atlas
cp manifest.json main.js styles.css /path/to/your/vault/.obsidian/plugins/brain-atlas/

Then reload Obsidian and enable the plugin.

Usage

Run Brain Atlas: Open atlas from the command palette or click the brain ribbon icon.

Controls:

• Drag to rotate.
• Scroll to zoom.
• Right-click to reset the camera.
• Labels toggles all canvas labels.
• All restores every region.
• None dims every region.
• FRO, PAR, TEM, OCC, CER, and STM toggle individual brain regions.

How Notes Are Classified

Brain Atlas assigns each note to a lobe using this order:

1. Frontmatter keys: kind, type, or category.
2. Tags such as #project, #person, #source, #daily, or #index.
3. Folder names such as Projects, People, Sources, Daily, Concepts, or Index.
4. Date-like filenames for daily notes.
5. Fallback to concept.

Default lobe mapping:

Region	Notes
Frontal	projects, decisions, questions
Parietal	concepts, tools, work threads
Temporal	people, organizations
Occipital	sources, repos
Cerebellum	daily notes, incidents
Brain stem	indexes, routing notes

Privacy

Brain Atlas reads Obsidian's local vault metadata and renders it in a local canvas view. It enumerates Markdown files in the vault with Obsidian's vault API, then uses each note's path, basename, frontmatter, tags, links, and embeds from Obsidian's metadata cache to build the graph. It does not read full note contents, make network requests, upload vault data, or require an account.

Because note names and paths appear visually in the graph when labels are enabled, use the Labels toggle before screensharing if your vault contains private note titles.

Development

npm install
npm test
npm run build

During development, you can copy manifest.json, main.js, and styles.css into a vault plugin folder after each build.

Demo Capture

The README animation is generated from synthetic data, not a real vault:

npm run demo:build
open demo/index.html

License

MIT