A Workflowy-style outliner for VS Code, running on plain local Markdown files.
Your notes are just a standard .md indented list — Obsidian and Logseq read them directly, and Git diffs stay readable. No proprietary format, no account, no cloud. Uninstall the extension and your files are still plain Markdown.
Features
Unlimited nesting — Enter to split, Tab / Shift+Tab to re-level, Backspace to merge
Fold / unfold — folding state lives in VS Code and is never written to your files
Zoom in — focus any subtree, with breadcrumb navigation
Task checkboxes — serialized as standard - [x]
Node notes — Shift+Enter opens a second line, stored as an indented continuation
Move and drag — Alt+↑/↓ moves a whole subtree; drag with the mouse to reorder across levels
Live search filter — keeps the ancestor chain, sees through folded nodes
Mirror references — the same node in several places, edited in sync, using Obsidian's native ^id / ![[#^id]] block-embed syntax
Full IME support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean input
Undo / redo delegated to VS Code's native undo stack — no second history to fight with
Keyboard shortcuts
Key
Action
Enter
Split the node at the caret (at the end of an expanded parent: create its first child)
Shift+Enter
Focus / create the node note; insert a newline inside a note
Tab / Shift+Tab
Indent / outdent
Backspace (at line start)
Merge with the previous node
Alt+↑ / Alt+↓
Move the node up / down, children included
Cmd/Ctrl+Enter
Toggle done
Alt+→ / Alt+←
Zoom into the current node / zoom out one level
Cmd/Ctrl+.
Fold / unfold the current node
↑ / ↓
Move to the adjacent node when on the first / last line
Cmd/Ctrl+Z / Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Z
Undo / redo (VS Code native)
Cmd/Ctrl+F
Focus the outline search box
Esc
Clear the search / cancel a drag
Use Cmd on macOS, Ctrl on Windows and Linux.
Usage
*.outline.md opens in OutlineNode by default.
For any other *.md: click ⋯ in the editor title bar → Reopen Editor With… → Outline, or run OutlineNode: Open as Outline from the command palette.
To make every .md under a given folder (say outlines/ in an Obsidian vault) open as an outline, use VS Code's native workbench.editorAssociations:
Remove the entry to go back to the text editor. Your files are untouched either way.
Interop with Obsidian / Logseq
What lands on disk is an ordinary Markdown indented list:
- This week ^k3f9a2
- Write the weekly report
- Collect last week's numbers
- [x] File the expense
A note lives on an indented continuation line
- Reference the item above: ![[#^k3f9a2]]
Obsidian — ^k3f9a2 is a block id and ![[#^k3f9a2]] is a block embed, so Obsidian renders it as a real embed. Same meaning on both sides.
Logseq and other outliners — an indented list is the lingua franca; they read it as-is.
Git — one edit produces a diff on the lines you edited, not a reflow of the whole file.
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
outlineNode.defaultIndent
2-space
Indent unit for new files, or when it can't be detected (2-space / 4-space / tab)
outlineNode.rememberFolding
true
Remember folding state across sessions
outlineNode.defaultFold
none
Folding applied when a file opens (none / firstLevel)
For existing files the indent unit is detected from the content and is never overridden by this setting.
Design principles
The file is the single source of truth. The TextDocument is the model, so undo, the dirty indicator, saving and hot restore all come from VS Code itself.
Minimal diffs. An edit rewrites only the lines it touches — no opportunistic reformatting of the rest of the file, which stays byte-for-byte identical.
UI state never hits disk. Folding, zoom and search live in VS Code. Your .md stays clean.
Contributing
See AGENTS.md and docs/ for the full technical specification.
