Obsidian plugins
Read, research and write with AI in Obsidian, on one set of keys.
Model Hub holds your keys and the receipts. Library Hub keeps your Calibre books as notes. Topic Map finds the topics your books and notes share. Learning Editor, coming soon, will coach your writing. I built them to work together, and I use them on my own library and notes.
The four plugins
Start with Model Hub. The others use it for their models, so you set up AI once.
Model HubThe base
Set up once and use AI in every Obsidian plugin.
Needs One API key, from OpenRouter or a dozen other providers, or a local model
Turn your books in Calibre into notes. Read them, shelve them, summarize every chapter.
Needs Calibre with its Content Server on; Model Hub for summaries
Topics found for you in your books, notes, shelves and Bases, and drawn as a map.
Needs Model Hub; Library Hub for book collections
Learning EditorComing soon
Feedback on your writing, marked on the exact words, from a coach that learns your habits.
Needs Nothing for the local checks; Model Hub for the coach
Better together
Most Obsidian plugins work alone, and each AI plugin wants its own key and keeps its own costs. These four share one set of keys and one ledger, and they hand each other work: book text, passages, topics and tools.
The plugins
Library Hub: books, shelves, the readerbook text → · ← match by meaningTopic Map: passages, cards, topics, the mapLearning Editor: marks and the coach · coming soon
every model call, priced and limited
Model Hub
keys · tiers · limits · one ledger · the tools of all of them
MCP
Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex
your plugins' tools, over MCP
Set up once, see every cent
I built Model Hub first because I was tired of typing the same key into every AI plugin. Add a provider once. Library Hub's summaries and Topic Map's indexing run on the tiers and limits you set there, and so will Learning Editor's coach. Every call lands in the same ledger, by plugin. None of the others ever holds a key.
This month, all plugins
$1.84
From a book on your shelf to a quoted answer
This is the one I use most. Library Hub brings a book in from Calibre and hands its text to Topic Map. Topic Map prices the index before it spends anything, reads the book into cards, and answers a question with quotes. Select a quote and the book opens in Library Hub's reader at that passage.
a raised beach in volcanic rock2 cards
a perfectly horizontal white band, in the face of the sea-cliff … at the height of about forty-five feet above the water
Voyage of the Beagle · Ch. I, St. JagoOpen in the reader
Similar, in another book
The same white calcareous bed at Porto Praya, traced along the coast.
Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands · Ch. IOpen in the reader
Shelves that know what their books are about
On its own, Library Hub matches books by the words they share. With Topic Map installed it also matches them by meaning: similar books that share few words, the shelves that suit a new book, shelves checked for books that don't belong, and living shelves that take in new books that fit.
Your whole library as one map
Topic Map draws your books as one map, colored by Library Hub's shelves. Any shelf can also become a Topic Map collection of its own, to search and ask about.
Ask from Claude Code, too
Model Hub runs one MCP server for the whole family. MCP is the standard way AI apps share tools. Switch it on, and Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Codex can search your Topic Map collections and work with your Library Hub shelves, with the same approvals and the same receipts.
Under the hood: MCP over Streamable HTTP, following the MCP spec of 2025-11-25, on 127.0.0.1 behind a token. Each plugin registers its tools with Model Hub; no plugin runs a server of its own. Technical details →
Each one does its own job alone, too
Library Hub does plenty with nothing else installed: Library Hub matches books by their words. Learning Editor's habit, spelling and grammar checks will run on your computer for free, too. Topic Map needs Model Hub. Each plugin checks which of the others you have, and says plainly what one would add.
Under the hood: every call to a sibling is feature-detected and gated on its API version (@insurgently/model-hub-api, library-hub-api, topic-map-api), so a plugin keeps working when another is missing or older.
Money and data, plainly
- They're all free, and staying free. Your provider bills you for what you use. Local models cost nothing per call.
- Your keys live only in Model Hub, in Obsidian's Keychain. The other plugins ask the Hub for every model call.
- Your notes and book text go to a model only through Model Hub, and only to the providers you've added.
- Any other request a plugin makes, like Library Hub looking up a cover at Open Library, is named on that plugin's Privacy and costs page.
- I get nothing from you: no telemetry, no account, no ads.
- They run on desktop Obsidian 1.13.1 or later.
What's coming, and how it fits
The three plugins call each other in both directions, so they came out together. Most of what's coming for one plugin rests on something another adds first, so it's grouped by what opens the door. None of it is dated.
Soon
- Learning Editor is coming soon. It needs only Model Hub. Its coach will show what a run costs before it starts, from Model Hub's price estimate.
Model Hub ships a skill for each Insurgently plugin
→Library Hub the chat can work with your books and shelves for you
Topic Map the chat can search your topics for you
Topic Map lets other plugins act on what you select on the map
→Library Hub draws shelves, reading status and covers on the map, and a lasso makes a shelf
Model Hub takes a passage as context, with its price shown first
→Library Hub Ask a book: answers that quote the book word for word
Later
Model Hub reads a web page when a plugin asks
→Library Hub a tidier library: it finds the gaps in a series and checks a book's details against the web
Model Hub runs workflows written as notes
→Library Hub one run builds a shelf, then summarizes it
Topic Map shares its topics with other plugins
→Library Hub the reader shows the topics beside the text
More plugins are on the way, on the same Model Hub base.Join below and you'll hear when one ships.
The full roadmap →Where to start
Each one installs from Settings → Community plugins in Obsidian. Each Project page has the steps.
- Install Model Hub and add one API key. OpenRouter is the easy start: one key reaches hundreds of models.
- Keep your books in Calibre? Add Library Hub.
- Want the topics across your books and notes? Add Topic Map.
- Writing a lot? Learning Editor is coming soon.
Curious how they work inside? Each Project page links its Technical details, with Developer docs for people building on a plugin and Agent docs for your coding agent. Want to help build them? Get involved →
Join
One list for everything here: an email when a plugin ships, plus the posts I write about these projects on brianspringer.com.
Want to help build this, or join the co‑op? Email me about joining →
Insurgent Methods is where we build at a different scale, to take on the biggest problems.
- Needs
- Obsidian 1.13.1, desktop