Skip to content
Smart Plugins

Official Smart Plugins site Smart Plugins are independent third-party plugins for Obsidian. Smart Connections is the flagship plugin.

Smart Environment v3

Open faster. Change models without starting over.

Smart Environment v3 is the upgrade you feel before opening any individual Smart Plugin. The suite reaches a useful state sooner, offers more built-in local embedding models, and lets you change the active model without restarting Obsidian or erasing the embeddings created by the model you were using before.

It also makes the invisible parts of the system much easier to trust. Notes and source sets move more cleanly between plugins, useful actions appear in more consistent menus, and you can finally inspect what was embedded instead of guessing from the results.

Smart Environment v3 is a coordinated suite upgrade. Update every installed Smart Plugin, then restart Obsidian. Mixed v2 and v3 environments are blocked so an incomplete update cannot leave the suite in a misleading half-updated state.

Faster startup across the suite

v3 removes more blocking, repeated, and unnecessary work from the path between opening Obsidian and using a Smart Plugin. Built-in local embedding work can initialize away from the main interface, unchanged sources no longer need the same full traversal on every load, and a local model can remain unloaded when there is no embedding work to perform.

Plugins also share more of the same readiness path instead of repeating setup on their own. The practical result is less time waiting for Connections, Lookup, Context, or Graph to become useful. When something is still loading, the Status view now makes that state clearer instead of leaving an empty surface to explain itself.

Measured startup and embedding impact

A Smart Connections benchmark exercised the Environment pipeline on one Windows system with 281 sources, 7,341 blocks, and the TaylorAI/bge-micro-v2 local model. It compared Smart Connections 4.5.3 with Smart Environment 2.4.6 against Smart Connections 4.7.2 with Smart Environment 3.1.1.

Measurement v2 baseline v3 observed Difference
First load to plugin-ready 37.68 s 24.96 s 33.7% faster
Subsequent load to plugin-ready 5.03 s 3.35 s 33.5% faster
Local embedding character throughput 39,830 chars/s 48,801 chars/s 22.5% higher
Subsequent smart_sources load 1.786 s 0.138 s 92.3% shorter
Empty embedding-queue path 1.002 s less than 1 ms More than 99.9% shorter
Vector preparation, storage, checkpoints, and final commit 1.357 s 0.090 s 93.4% shorter

On the subsequent load, the older path traversed an import queue containing all 281 sources, initialized the local model, built an embedding queue, and only then discovered that no items required embedding. The v3 path processed the one source requiring import work and returned from the empty embedding queue without creating the model.

During first-load embedding, the older path issued one model call per item. The v3 path uses worker-backed batching, a batch window, and input-length sorting so each model call can process more useful work. Vector-file persistence also avoids much of the repeated source, block, and checkpoint writing performed by the older inline-storage path.

These measurements are representative observations, not universal guarantees. Only one run per version and condition was captured, and cache state, hardware, model choice, and vault contents can change the result. The v3 first-load queue also contained 19.2% fewer input characters, so its raw 36.2% shorter embedding duration is not an equal-work comparison. The 22.5% character-throughput improvement is the more useful normalized result.

Switch embedding models without throwing the old index away

Changing embedding models used to feel like a one-way migration. In v3, each model can keep its own stored embeddings. You can activate another model without reloading Obsidian or deleting the data produced by the previous model, then switch back later without treating the experiment as a full reset.

The built-in local model catalog is broader too, including more lightweight and multilingual choices for different vaults and hardware. Embedding and chat model settings now make the active model, readiness, dimensions, errors, deletion, and reindexing easier to understand.

The suite now behaves like a suite

Drag a saved Context into Chat. Send Lookup results to Graph. Drop a vault note onto Connections. Open the menu on a source and continue from that source without first navigating to another plugin.

Supported notes, blocks, folders, saved contexts, and result sets now arrive as the thing you moved instead of collapsing into a file path or plain text. The same shared action system also gives menus, commands, ribbon buttons, source actions, and status controls more consistent behavior across the suite.

Stop guessing about the index

The improved Stats view turns index health into something you can inspect. Review source and block totals, embedding coverage, loaded-vector memory, skipped items, and unexpected vectors from one place.

The source inspector goes one level deeper. Open the active note or another source to see what was imported, what was embedded, what was skipped, and why. Search and reason filters help with larger collections, and Force re-import gives you a direct recovery path when one note is stale.

Export what the Environment has built

Data export now lets you choose the collections to include, decide whether vectors belong in the export, watch progress, and see a clear completion or retry state. Backups, diagnostics, and migrations no longer require blind trust in an opaque export step.

Pro: API keys belong in Obsidian's keychain

Smart Environment Pro can store supported API keys through Obsidian's native, keychain-backed secret storage instead of ordinary plugin settings. Pro plugins get one safer shared way to retrieve credentials while Obsidian remains responsible for protecting the secret.

The v3 difference

Before With Smart Environment v3
Smart Plugins could repeat blocking work, revisit unchanged sources, or initialize a local model before discovering that the embedding queue was empty. Shared startup work is reduced, source processing is incremental, and local models stay unloaded until embedding work exists.
Local embedding commonly issued one model call per item and repeatedly persisted inline vectors during longer runs. Worker-backed, length-aware batches process more items per call while vector-file persistence reduces repeated checkpoint and collection writes.
Changing embedding models felt like committing to a rebuild. Switch models without restarting Obsidian or deleting another model's stored embeddings.
The built-in local model choice was narrower. Choose from a broader catalog, including more lightweight and multilingual options.
Dragging between plugins could reduce a useful object to a path or text. Supported items retain enough meaning for the destination to continue the workflow.
Index problems were difficult to locate. Stats and source inspection show what is embedded, skipped, stale, or unexpected.
Exporting shared data required more trust than feedback. Choose the contents, watch progress, and see a clear completion or retry state.

Supporting improvements

Learn more

Release notes

Smart Environment v3.0.0

Smart Environment Core

v3.1.0

v3.1.3

Switch embedding models without starting over

Change embedding models without deleting data saved for models you have already used. You also get more built-in model choices and faster processing for the default local model.

Compare the expanded built-in model choices before choosing what should index your vault.

See what was skipped - and fix it

Environment stats makes skipped and unexpected items easier to investigate. Search the list, filter by reason, inspect the source behind a result, force a re-import, repair block embeddings, or optimize stored source data with backup validation.

Long source paths no longer get excluded during normal indexing simply because they exceed 200 characters.

Filter skipped blocks by reason, then inspect the source behind each result.

Keep credentials in secure storage

API keys and legacy OAuth tokens now use shared secure storage, backed by Obsidian's native secret storage where available. Migration checks that secure storage can persist a secret before moving existing credentials.

A calmer event feed

Open View more when you need the details behind an event, then load incoming events with Show more when you are ready. New activity no longer shifts the feed while you are reading.

Full release notes
Models and indexing
Sources and stored data
Diagnostics and recovery
Credentials
Notifications and navigation
Shared infrastructure and maintenance
Release publishing

Smart Environment Pro

v3.2.0

v3.2.3

Use accelerated indexing with more embedding models

The accelerated index now supports embedding models that do not report their dimensions, including custom Ollama models. OpenAI embeddings also use the vector dimension you configure, so the index matches the model output you selected.

Re-imports and new embeddings now update the accelerated index in batches, reducing repeated index work as your vault changes.

See more of the index's memory footprint

Memory reporting now includes allocations used by the accelerated index in addition to loaded vectors.

Embedding Health shows source coverage and vector memory together, including the accelerated index's own allocations.

Full release notes
Indexing and model compatibility
Memory and exclusions
Shared infrastructure and maintenance