What Obelisk is

Select a passage in a note, leave a comment on it, and optionally propose a replacement that can be applied with one click.

Comments are stored in the note’s own frontmatter, so they travel with the file through sync, git, export and rename. There is no sidecar database and nothing to keep in step with the vault.

An obelus (†) was the mark ancient editors drew in the margin of a manuscript to say: this passage is disputed.

Three front ends over one format

	What it is	Where it runs
Plugin	Highlights, sidebar, composer, Apply button	Obsidian
obelisk	Four verbs: list, comment, reply, resolve	A shell
obelisk-mcp	The same four verbs, as MCP tools	An agent

The storage format is the interface. Anything that can edit a file can leave a comment the plugin will render, which is why the agent integration needed a safe write path and an anchor rule rather than a new channel.

What it does

• Comments on any passage, by selecting text and choosing Add comment.
• Suggested edits, written as a fenced suggestion block inside the comment body and rendered as a diff against the quoted passage, with an Apply button.
• Threaded replies, markdown all the way down.
• A sidebar listing a note’s comments in document order.
• Highlighting in the text, with a † that opens the comment.
• A CLI and an MCP server over the same comments.

What it is not

There is no model client in the plugin: no API key in settings, no Review this note button. The plugin’s job is to be a good place for a comment to land, and the agent is one the reader already has open in another window.

There is no sidecar store for machine comments either. An agent’s comment is the same object as a person’s, in the same file, under the same anchoring rules.

Status

Pre-release. Anchoring, decoration, the sidebar, suggested edits and the agent integration are implemented. It has not been submitted to the Obsidian community plugin directory, nothing is published to npm, and it has not been exercised against a large vault.