pi-obsidian-preview

Open the last Pi assistant response in Obsidian, to preview and render Markdown, LaTex, code, diff, mermaid, and more. Inspired by pi-markdown-preview, but using obsidian's markdown rendering engine for further extensibility.

Install

Per-project (only active when pi runs from your vault):

cd ~/your-vault
pi install -l npm:pi-obsidian-preview

Global (active everywhere — set PI_OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH in your shell profile first):

export PI_OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH="$HOME/your-vault"   # add to ~/.zshrc
pi install npm:pi-obsidian-preview

Usage

| Action | How | |---|---| | Open last response in Obsidian | Type /preview in pi | | Keyboard shortcut | Ctrl+Shift+B (optional — use /preview instead if you prefer) |

The extension writes the last assistant response to pi-preview-latest.md in your vault root and opens it in Obsidian.

visual-explain skill

This package includes a skill that tells the agent it can use Obsidian's full rendering palette — Mermaid diagrams, LaTeX math, callouts, and rich formatting — to explain concepts visually. The agent produces rich responses in chat; you preview them with /preview.

| Trigger | How | |---|---| | Ask for explanation or visualization | Auto-activates on phrases like "help me visualize it", "show me", "draw a diagram", "explain how X works" | | Invoke explicitly | /skill:visual-explain |

What the agent can generate:

• Mermaid diagrams — flowchart, sequenceDiagram, classDiagram, stateDiagram, erDiagram, gantt, pie, gitGraph, mindmap, timeline, and more
• LaTeX math — $inline$ and $$block$$ (math topics only)
• Obsidian callouts — > [!note], > [!warning], > [!tip], and 13 more types, with custom titles and foldable variants
• Other formatting — highlight, strikethrough, task lists, footnotes, wikilinks, hidden comments, block anchors, YAML frontmatter

Prerequisites

• Obsidian CLI on PATH — install via Homebrew: brew install obsidian
• Per-project: run pi from your vault root (cd ~/your-vault && pi)
• Global: set PI_OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH (see below)

Configuration

Both environment variables are optional. Only set what you need.

| Env var | When to set | Default | |---|---|---| | PI_OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH | Only for global installs (skip for per-project) | Current directory | | PI_OBSIDIAN_PREVIEW_SHORTCUT | Only to change the default shortcut | ctrl+shift+b |

Add to ~/.zshrc or equivalent:

# Required for global installs:
export PI_OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH="$HOME/your-vault"

# Optional — customize the shortcut:
export PI_OBSIDIAN_PREVIEW_SHORTCUT="ctrl+shift+o"

Troubleshooting

| Problem | Fix | |---|---| | /preview doesn't appear | Confirm pi is restarted after install | | "obsidian: command not found" | brew install obsidian | | "No assistant response" | Ask pi a question first, then /preview | | Obsidian opens but file is empty | The extension retries once — wait ~2 seconds |

License

MIT