1.5.0

Added

• An "Add person" button in the dashboard header, and the same dialog offered
  from the empty states — previously creating a person was only reachable through
  the command palette, which is easy to miss.
• The dialog asks for the tier alongside the name. A person with no tier isn't
  tracked at all, so creating one without asking would quietly produce someone the
  plugin ignores.

Performance

• Exclusion fragments are tokenized once per index build instead of once per
  candidate file, so the cost no longer scales with files × fragments. Measured on
  5,000 people: 20 fragments went from 20.8ms to 13.7ms, and the cost is now flat in
  fragment count rather than linear.
• A file already inside a people folder no longer has its tags and type marker
  evaluated, since neither can change the outcome. Tag-based identification across
  13,000 files: 5.2ms to 4.4ms.
• The unrendered-placeholder check does a cheap substring test before its regex,
  which almost never matches.

1.4.0

Changed

• No default now assumes a particular vault's layout. The people folder and the
  dated-note folders ship empty rather than guessing at names, so an unconfigured
  install says "Nothing is set up yet" instead of reporting a folder the user never
  chose as missing. First-run detection, and a Detect folders from your vault
  action, fill them in from Daily Notes or Periodic Notes plus a likely people
  folder — and only ever fill what has been left empty.
• The creation-date fields no longer include creation date, which came from one
  vault's template rather than any general convention. Existing settings are
  untouched: a persisted value always wins over a default.

Added

• Create a person note from the command palette, with three new settings —
  the folder to create in, a template to copy, and a tier to assign — so a new
  person is tracked from the moment they exist. An existing note is never
  overwritten; creating someone who already exists opens them instead.
• Templates support {{title}}, {{date}}, {{time}} and any imported field as
  {{email}}, {{phone}} and so on. Templater's tp.date.now, tp.file.title
  and tp.file.cursor are translated to their result; other Templater expressions
  are removed rather than left sitting in the note unevaluated.
• Contacts with no matching note are now actionable in the import. Each one
  offers Create note — using the same folder, template and tier — or Link to…,
  which attaches the details to an existing person filed under a different name.
  Both feed the same review list, and creations are covered by the same single undo.
• Undo now covers created notes. Undoing a creation trashes the note, unless it has
  been edited since, in which case it's left alone as the user's work.

Fixed

• A real name containing an exclusion word was silently dropped. Exclusions were
  matched as substrings, so "MOC" hid anyone called Mochizuki and "index" hid
  Indexa. They are now matched as whole words, which also makes a broader default
  list safe.

• Rebuild index now reports what it found — "239 people · 1897/1897 dated
  notes · 2877 interactions · 50ms" — instead of appearing to do nothing. It was
  re-deriving the index correctly, but since the index already updates itself as
  notes change, the counts rarely moved and there was no other feedback.

• Release notes contained the entire changelog rather than the section for the
  version being released. The workflow now extracts just that version's section,
  and fails before building if the version has no changelog entry at all.

1.3.0

Changed

• The note preview is a bounded, scrollable box again. It was growing to the
  full height of the note, which pushed the action buttons out of reach and left
  only the top of the file visible with no way to scroll to the rest. The height
  cap now lives on a dedicated scroll container rather than on the element that
  carries Obsidian's markdown-rendered class, which was overriding it.

• The preview skips what isn't worth reading. Unfilled template syntax
  (<% … %>, {{ … }}), bullets that are only a label with no value
  (- First met:), and headings left empty once those are gone are all omitted.
  A note straight from a template now says "Nothing written about them yet."
  instead of showing a screenful of placeholder.

• The note field when logging contact is now a full-width, resizable text box
  rather than a single-line input, so there's room to write something worth
  reading back. Line breaks are preserved: a multi-line note is indented to the
  bullet's text column so every line stays inside the same log entry instead of
  the second line breaking out of the list.

• The reach-out flow has a note box too. Whatever you write is saved with the
  contact when you press Logged it, and drafts are kept per person while you
  move back and forth through the queue, so navigating away doesn't lose typing.
  ⌘/Ctrl+Enter logs without reaching for the mouse.

Fixed

• An appended contact log no longer revives the empty heading above it. A
  section was judged on everything up to the next heading of the same or higher
  level, so a ## Contact log nested under an empty # Thoughts counted as that
  heading's content. Sections are now judged on their own direct content.
• The contact log heading matches the note's own section level instead of
  always being ##. In a note whose sections are #, a ## heading nested the
  log under whichever section happened to come last — wrong in the outline, and
  the cause of the bug above.
• When a note has only template headings, the preview now says which sections are
  empty ("Nothing written down yet — Facts and Thoughts are empty.") rather than a
  bare "nothing written", which read as though the preview had failed on a file
  that visibly has headings in it.
• Arrow keys no longer jump between people while the caret is in a text field —
  the reach-out shortcuts now stand aside when you're typing.

1.2.1

Fixed

• The dashboard header and filter tabs are now locked in place. They were
  positioned with position: sticky, which only covered the header — the filter
  tabs, search box and sort control scrolled away with the list — and let rows
  show through above the header as they scrolled. The view is now two panes: the
  header and toolbar are fixed, and the list is its own scroll container, so rows
  are clipped by the list's box and cannot appear above the chrome.
• On narrow screens the cadence hairline sat at each row's absolute bottom.
  Because stacked rows put the action buttons on their own line, the line read as
  belonging to the next person's name. It's decorative, so it's hidden at that
  width.

1.2.0

Adopts Obsidian's declarative settings API, which raises the minimum Obsidian
version, and clears the plugin review findings.

Upgrade notes

minAppVersion is now 1.13.0 (was 1.7.2). This is the version that
introduced the declarative settings API, and it is not optional: the deprecated
display() path and getSettingDefinitions() are mutually exclusive, and
several other calls (setDestructive) are 1.13-only too. Users on Obsidian 1.7
through 1.12 stay on 1.1.0, which versions.json handles automatically.

Your settings carry over untouched.

Changed

• Settings are now declarative, so every setting appears in Obsidian's
  settings search — including by alias, so searching "periodic notes",
  "troubleshoot" or "vcard" finds the relevant row.
• Journal sources and tiers are now proper lists: each entry is its own page
  showing its current value inline, tiers can be reordered by dragging, and a
  dated folder that doesn't exist — or whose format matches nothing — is flagged
  with a warning on the entry itself.
• Folder fields use Obsidian's built-in folder picker rather than a hand-rolled
  suggester.
• The tier-deletion confirmation is an in-app dialog instead of a native
  confirm(), which blocked the whole window.

Fixed

• A frontmatter value that isn't a scalar — prm-birthday: {a: b} — was
  stringified to the literal "[object Object]" and written back into the note.
  Non-scalar values are now refused.
• Replaced builtin-modules with node:module's builtinModules.
• Frontmatter is read through one helper that types it as unknown rather than
  any, so every read site is checked.
• Obsidian's re-exported moment resolves to any; date parsing now narrows it
  to the two methods it uses.
• Async work no longer returns promises from positions typed as void
  (SuggestModal overrides, button handlers).

Development

• Added an ESLint setup using eslint-plugin-obsidianmd plus
  typescript-eslint's type-checked rules; npm run lint is clean.
• Added a release workflow that builds from source on a version tag, verifies the
  tag matches manifest.json, and records build provenance attestations so
  published assets can be traced to a commit.

1.1.0

A correctness, portability and performance pass. The headline change is that the
plugin no longer mistakes writing about someone for having contacted them.

Upgrade notes

Read these four before upgrading — each changes behaviour you may already rely
on.

1. Mentions that record an intention no longer count as contact. A link
   inside an unchecked to-do, a blockquote, a code fence, or an embed is now
   ignored. Previously, writing - [ ] reach out to [[Sam]] marked Sam as
   contacted and cleared their overdue status — the reminder deleted itself the
   moment you acted on it. A completed task (- [x] called Sam) still counts.

   Effect on existing vaults: some people will now show as less recently
   contacted, and more will appear overdue. That is the correction, not a
   regression. Turn it off with Ignore mentions that aren't contact if you
   prefer the old behaviour.

2. Settings migrate automatically. peopleFolder becomes personFolders (a
   list) and journalFolders becomes journalSources (a folder plus a moment
   format). Your existing values are carried over and first-run detection is
   suppressed, so nothing is overwritten. No action needed.

3. Log lines are written differently. The heading is now a level-2 ##, and
   the date links the day's note by its real title —
   - [[Aug 14, 2026|2026-08-14]] — or is written as a plain date when no note
   exists for that day. Previously it always emitted [[YYYY-MM-DD]], which
   created an unresolvable link in every person note when your daily notes are
   named anything else. Existing log entries are left alone.

4. minAppVersion is now 1.7.2 (was 1.5.0), because revealLeaf is awaited.

Added

• Configurable date formats. Dates come from a moment.js pattern per folder,
  the same format Daily Notes and Periodic Notes use, so you can paste yours in
  — including folder-nesting patterns like YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD. Previously four
  hardcoded patterns were tried, which silently ignored most real-world naming
  schemes, including three of Periodic Notes' five defaults. Day-first formats
  (DD-MM-YYYY) now parse correctly instead of being read a month off.
• First-run detection. On a fresh install the plugin reads your Periodic
  Notes or core Daily Notes configuration for the journal folder and format, and
  looks for a folder named People, Contacts, Friends or similar.
• People can be identified three ways, in any combination: a list of
  folders, tags matched as a prefix (person also claims #person/work), or a
  frontmatter marker such as type: person. Tags and markers find people
  anywhere in the vault, so a vault organised by area rather than by type works.
• Date-field fallback. A note whose filename has no date can be dated by a
  frontmatter field (date: by default), which makes note-per-meeting
  workflows work.
• Diagnostics. Settings shows real counts — people found, notes scanned,
  notes successfully dated, interactions derived — and every empty state names
  the actual cause rather than implying you have nobody to contact.
• Unknown-tier warning. Deleting a tier used to silently stop tracking
  everyone assigned to it. Deletion now warns with the count, and affected
  people are flagged in the dashboard instead of appearing unclassified.
• A clickable last-contact date that opens the note the interaction came from.
• Configurable creation-date fields, with a broader default set (created,
  Created, date created, ctime, …) and support for [[wikilink]]-wrapped
  dates. People whose baseline came from the file's timestamp rather than real
  data are labelled estimated, since sync and git clone both reset it.
• An exclusion list for templates, MOCs and index notes, plus automatic skipping
  of notes containing unrendered {{placeholders}}.
• Mobile layout: rows stack, and row actions are always visible rather than
  revealed on hover.

Fixed

Data integrity

• The body log write is now atomic. Logging contact and then immediately
  changing that row's tier could silently discard the log entry entirely — both
  actions reported success.
• Writes are serialized per note, and undo snapshots are taken inside that
  sequence. Two overlapping actions previously merged into one snapshot, so a
  single undo reversed a change you never asked to reverse, and the undo/redo
  stacks could desynchronize.
• The Undo link in a confirmation toast now reverses that action. Because
  toasts last seven seconds, two could be on screen at once and clicking either
  undid whichever action was newest.
• Empty and impossible dates are rejected. Clearing the date field in the log
  dialog wrote an empty value, destroying any existing prm-last-contacted and
  writing a - [[]] link. A stored date like 2026-13-45 passed validation and
  gave someone a future last-contact, so they never became overdue again.
• processFrontMatter failures are caught and reported. One note with malformed
  YAML previously produced a written body bullet, no frontmatter update, no undo
  entry, and no message of any kind.
• The contact importer re-checks each field against the note's current value at
  the moment of writing, so only fill empty fields still means that if you
  edited the note after generating the preview.
• The log heading is located through the metadata cache, which is fence-aware. A
  ## Contact log shown as an example inside a code block could capture entries.

Undo

• A multi-file undo that fails partway rolls back what it already wrote, rather
  than leaving half a bulk import reverted.
• Snapshot paths follow a note when it is renamed. Previously a rename made undo
  permanently impossible.
• An undo blocked by an external edit is kept rather than silently discarded, so
  it can be retried once the conflict clears.
• History is capped by size (32 MB) as well as count. Repeated bulk imports
  could retain hundreds of megabytes.

Interaction handling

• Two notes dated the same day count as one interaction, not two.

Contact import

• Names in non-Latin scripts are matched. 李伟, Иван Петров and محمد علي
  previously normalized to an empty string, making the importer inert for entire
  scripts.
• Word order and honorifics are handled, so Rivera, Sam and Dr. Sam Rivera
  both find Sam Rivera. vCard's own N: field is family-name-first, so this
  was the common case.
• Non-US birthdays are no longer corrupted. 17/04/1999 became month 17, which
  was written to the note and then silently never displayed. Genuinely ambiguous
  dates are dropped rather than guessed.
• Nicknames are merged into whichever alias key the note already uses, instead of
  creating a second aliases: alongside an existing alias:.
• Google's myContacts system label is filtered out of imported labels.

Interface

• Folder settings are normalized, so People\Friends, a leading /, and
  accented folder names typed on macOS all resolve. Folders are validated and
  offer autocomplete.
• Snoozing from the reach-out flow no longer marks someone handled and skips
  them when you press Escape without choosing.
• Note previews release their rendered content as you advance, instead of
  accumulating live render subtrees for every person in a session.
• The status bar element is created once, rather than re-registering its click
  handler each time the setting is toggled.

Performance

• The dashboard renders once per change on the next animation frame, instead of
  up to three times per click, and skips rendering entirely while its pane is
  hidden — a background tab was previously paying full DOM construction cost on
  every metadata change anywhere in the vault.
• The search box filters rows that are already built. Typing previously rebuilt
  every row per keystroke.
• Each row's tier control is a button that opens the existing picker rather than
  a <select> carrying an option per tier, which accounted for roughly 45% of
  render cost.
• metadataCache change events are filtered to files that can actually affect
  the index, so editing an unrelated note costs nothing.
• Filename-to-date parsing is memoized, with a fast path that skips moment
  entirely for ISO dates and an early exit for filenames containing no digits.
• Settings writes are debounced. Typing a folder name previously triggered a
  reindex, a render and a disk write per character.
• Bulk imports yield to the event loop in chunks and report progress, instead of
  freezing the window.

Measured on a 2,600-file vault: a dashboard action goes from roughly 124 ms to
under 10 ms, typing a search query from about 405 ms to 25 ms, and a full reindex
sits at 2.6 ms. Figures come from the real bundled code driven in a Node harness
and in Chromium, not from Electron, so treat them as indicative of the direction
and rough magnitude rather than exact.