Deckard Notes - Visual Studio Marketplace

Deckard

A local-first second brain for the Markdown notes already in your VS Code workspace. Write #tags, @people, [[links]], and - [ ] tasks the way you always have; Deckard connects them into one index and gives you Home, a Task board, search pages, a notes graph, and a sidebar of related notes — without changing how your notes are written or sending them anywhere.

Read the guide · Getting started · Install from the Marketplace · Changelog

Deckard's Home: overdue, due today, and open tasks, and a Home of widgets.

Why Deckard

Your notes stay yours. Plain Markdown is the source of truth. Deckard writes to a note only when you ask it to, shows a change that reaches several notes before making it, and can take the last one back. What Deckard writes lists every change, and For your security reviewer says what it sends and stores: nothing leaves your machine unless you use an AI feature.
Everything is connected. A tag, a person, or a project gathers every note section and task that mentions it, wherever it was written.
Tasks where you wrote them. Checklist items become a Tasks view, a Kanban board, and a status bar count; completing one ticks the box in its note.
Fast on big workspaces. The first scan says what it read, later starts check only what changed, and editing never waits on indexing.
Designed to be used, not just to work. Deckard's pages are laid out to be read at a glance and to feel at home in VS Code: the default look takes its colors and fonts from your VS Code theme, a Task board card moves by drag, menu, or key, dates can be typed in plain words, and a Zen mode turns the chrome down when you want to write.
Accessible by default. Every text pair in every theme meets WCAG AA contrast, and every theme gives way to a high contrast editor theme. Every right-click menu opens from the keyboard, the Task board and Notes Graph work from it too, and focus stays put through a redraw. A screen reader hears what changed, and pages hold still when your system asks for reduced motion. See Accessibility and keyboard.

Features


Tags, people, and entities	`#tags`, `@people`, and namespaced tags such as `#project/atlas`, on headings, lines, tasks, and front matter, become one index.
Types and fields	Say in one note what a team, a person, or an incident is, and the front matter you already write becomes fields: every team as a table you sort and group, each row's fields on its page, and Find answering who leads checkout?
Links and embeds	`[[Note]]`, `[[Note#Heading]]`, and `[[Note#^line]]` complete and open; `![[Note#Heading]]` shows a section in place; Copy as Plain Markdown writes them out for a chat, an email, or a pull request.
The / menu	A `/` at the start of a line offers a task, a heading, a link or an embed, a query block, a table of notes or tasks, or one of your templates.
Tasks	Due, scheduled, and start dates, priorities, repeats, dependencies, steps, and who a task is for, in either Obsidian Tasks format — with a task editor that takes dates in plain words, and Snooze until… to put a task off to a day.
Task board	Open tasks as columns by status, priority, due date, person, or any tag namespace; drag a card to rewrite the task. Sort by your own rank or Most urgent, or show a table.
Search	Find in Notes searches notes, tasks, and tags as you type, and a small query language — `#project/atlas AND is:open AND due < 7d` — runs everywhere.
Search pages	A tag's page collects everything that uses it; any search opens the same page, and one edit can change everything it found.
Query blocks	A `deckard` code fence keeps a live list or table of a search's notes and tasks inside a note, grouped by due date, priority, status, or tag if you like; tick a task right in the preview.
Home and Stats	What is overdue, due today, and open; a Home of widgets you arrange, with how far along each project is; the notes nothing links to and tags spelled two ways.
Hubs	A sidebar tree of your projects, people, and other topics, each with the notes about it filed underneath, like pages in Notion; a note's first line shows where it sits, such as Projects › Atlas › Vendor review.
Related notes and the graph	A sidebar ranks the notes most related to the one you are editing, and says why; the Notes Graph maps every connection.
Daily notes and reviews	Today's note from your template, yesterday's unfinished tasks carried in, weekly and monthly reviews written for you, a calendar page where you drag a task to another day, and your dated tasks in your own calendar app.
Renaming and tidying	Rename a tag, note, or heading everywhere it is written; merge lookalike tags; park what you are not working on.
AI assistants	Copilot, Claude Code, and other MCP clients can search your notes and tasks with Deckard's queries, and describe a tag and its fields.
Themes and Zen	Eight looks for Deckard's pages, and a Zen mode that turns the chrome down in any of them.

Task board. Drag a card between columns, or use its ⋯ menu or a key.	A tag's page. Every note section and task that uses it, and the tags it travels with.
Related Notes. What else you wrote about this, ranked, with each score explained.	Notes Graph. Every note, task, and tag connection, or one note's neighborhood.
Find in Notes. Notes, tasks, and tags as you type.	Query blocks. A search's results, live, inside a note.

Themes

Pick one with Deckard: Choose Theme… or Theme in any page's gear; moving through the list previews it on the open pages. The default, Mimic, takes its colors and fonts from your VS Code theme, light or dark. Corpo is the same plain look, always in VS Code's default colors: Dark 2026 when your theme is dark, Light 2026 when it is light. More on themes and Zen mode.

Mimic, in Solarized Dark	Mimic, in Solarized Light	Cooper

Corpo, with a dark VS Code theme	Corpo, with a light VS Code theme	Razorback

Replicant	Oblivion	LCARS

Tomcat	Fellowship	Synthwave

Quick start

Install Deckard from the Visual Studio Marketplace: search for Deckard in the Extensions view, or run code --install-extension esperinnovations.deckard-notes. Deckard needs VS Code 1.134.0 or newer.
Run Deckard: Get Started for a walkthrough of six steps you check off as you go, in your own notes or in a sample workspace it offers to make.
Run Deckard: Open Home, and select the Deckard icon in the Activity Bar for Context (related notes and more), the Tasks view, the Outline, and the calendar.
Press the ? on any Deckard page, or run Deckard: Open Help, to read the guide inside VS Code, its pages down the side.

A note is written the way you already write:

# Launch plan #project/atlas

Talked with @dana about the vendor shortlist. See [[Vendor review]].

- [/] Send the proposal 📅 2026-10-09 ⏫
- [ ] Book the review room 🔁 every week

Private by design

Deckard reads the Markdown in your workspace and keeps its index on your machine. It sends nothing to a server; the one exception is a task's own words, sent to a language model only when you choose Suggest steps. See privacy and source safety.

License

Deckard is released under the MIT License.

Esper Themes

Deckard is made by Esper Innovations. For film-inspired, high-contrast VS Code color themes, including Cooper, Replicant, LCARS, and an accessibility-aware generated theme, try Esper Themes.