Gemd
Your Obsidian vault in Visual Studio Code. Write notes, follow links and move Kanban cards in one program instead of two.
I used Obsidian for notes and VS Code for code. Gemd opens the same Markdown files inside VS Code with an Obsidian-style live preview. It never converts or rewrites your vault, so Obsidian and Gemd can open the same files side by side.
Features
- Live preview. Headings, bold, links and checkboxes render as you type. The line under the cursor shows its raw Markdown, like in Obsidian.
- Wikilinks.
[[Note]], [[Note|alias]] and [[folder/Note]] open the note; a link to a missing note offers to create it. Typing [[ suggests every note in the workspace.
- Callouts, tables and math.
> [!tip] callouts in their colors, GitHub tables as real tables, and KaTeX for $inline$ and $$block$$ math. Prices like $5 and $10 stay text.
- Images.
![[image.png]] and  embeds, with |300 widths.
- Backlinks. A panel in the Explorer lists the notes that link to the open note.
- Kanban boards. Files made by the Obsidian Kanban plugin open as boards: drag cards and lists, collapse lists, archive cards or whole lists, dates with
@{2026-10-23}, a search box, and board, list and table views. Card and list menus follow the Obsidian plugin.
- Obsidian habits.
Ctrl+L turns a line into a task and ticks it. Ctrl+N makes a new note, and closing the last tab shows a New tab page with New note, New board and Go to file.
- Go to Folder.
Ctrl+Shift+O (outside a text editor, where it stays Go to Symbol) finds any folder in the vault and shows it in the Explorer.
- One text size.
gemd.fontSize sets notes, boards and the toolbar together.
Getting started
Install Gemd and open your vault folder in VS Code.
Open a note with Open in Gemd in the editor title bar, or make Gemd the default for Markdown:
"workbench.editorAssociations": { "*.md": "gemd.markdown" }
Undo, redo and Ctrl+S are VS Code's own, so a note behaves like any other file.
Ctrl+N and the New tab page are on only when the workspace has an .obsidian folder.
What it does not do
- Obsidian plugins do not run here. Dataview queries, Canvas, Excalidraw and the graph view stay in Obsidian.
- Links resolve by file name with exact case, while Obsidian ignores case.
- Settings come from Gemd, not from your
.obsidian folder, except the Kanban board settings stored in each board file.
Design
- The file is the only state. Every edit, from a typed letter to a card moved across the board, goes to VS Code as a change to a few lines. Nothing re-serializes the file, so front matter, spacing and line endings stay as Obsidian wrote them. The tests move every card of a real board out and back and check the file is identical byte for byte.
- Outside changes win. When Obsidian, Syncthing or git changes a file, the view updates. A board edit that is open at that moment is moved onto the new text, or dropped with a warning if both touched the same lines.
- Small. About 1,500 lines of plain JavaScript on CodeMirror 6, bundled with esbuild. No framework.
Project structure
gemd/
├── src/
│ ├── extension.js VS Code side: custom editor, links, backlinks, commands
│ ├── webview.js webview entry: note or board, messages from VS Code
│ ├── preview.js the note editor: live preview, tables, KaTeX math
│ ├── board.js the Kanban board, its menus and toolbar
│ ├── shared.js note text, inline Markdown, links
│ └── kanban.mjs Obsidian Kanban parsing and line-level edits
├── media/ styles and icon
├── test/ node:test suites for the board and the VS Code side
└── docs/ screenshots
Development
npm install
npm test # GEMD_BOARD=path/to/board.md adds the lossless test on a real board
npm run package # builds gemd-<version>.vsix
code --install-extension gemd-1.0.0.vsix
License
MIT.
Obsidian and Visual Studio Code are trademarks of their owners. Gemd is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Obsidian or Microsoft.
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