Drop saves into your vault.

Obsidian is local — there is no server, and there is no API to talk to. The bridge between Shelf and your vault is the obsidian:// URL scheme that Obsidian registers on install. Shelf builds a URL with your note inside, hands it to Chrome, Chrome hands it to Obsidian, Obsidian opens the vault and writes the note. No plugin required.

The cost: the first time, the browser will ask whether to open Obsidian. After you tick Always allow, it goes silent.

Turn it on

Open Shelf’s Options page → Destinations and tick Obsidian. There is no extra configuration. Shelf creates the note at the vault root using whichever vault Obsidian opens by default on this machine — set the default vault inside Obsidian itself if you have more than one.

What gets written

A new note named after the article’s slug (lowercase, hyphenated, ≤ 80 chars). The content is the same Markdown body the standard export produces, with a small twist for Obsidian-flavoured features:

---
title: "On Marginalia"
url: https://www.theatlantic.com/.../on-marginalia/
hostname: theatlantic.com
saved: 2026-05-11
kind: article
reading_time_min: 11
tags:
  - pkm
  - essay
---

# On Marginalia

> [!quote] Excerpt
> A short defence of pencil-marks in books — the argument that annotation is not a defacement of the text but a record of having been there.

> [!summary] AI summary
> - Annotation is a form of intimacy with a text, not its violation.
> - Margins record the reader's response in the moment of reading.
> - The history of marginalia is the history of how books were actually used.

> [!note] Highlight
> A book half-read is twice owned.

---

Source: [theatlantic.com](https://www.theatlantic.com/.../on-marginalia/) · 11 min read

The frontmatter follows the Markdown export schema: title, url, hostname, saved, kind, optional reading_time_min, optional ai_backend, and a YAML list of merged tags. Obsidian indexes those automatically. Collection membership is not written into the frontmatter.

The body uses Obsidian’s callouts so the same Markdown stays compact and scannable:

• [!quote] Excerpt — the captured excerpt
• [!summary] AI summary — the three-bullet AI summary (Pro)
• [!note] Highlight — the text you selected at save-time
• A ## Transcript heading + body when a YouTube transcript was fetched

The first time

The first time you trigger an Obsidian export, Chrome asks whether to open Obsidian. Tick Always allow obsidian.md to open obsidian links, then Open Obsidian. After this, future exports are silent. Obsidian launches if it was closed, opens the default vault, writes the new note, and focuses it.

Troubleshooting

— Nothing happens when I save. Try saving any page. If nothing opens, Obsidian isn’t installed on this device or the obsidian:// URL handler isn’t registered — reinstall Obsidian to re-register it.

— A note with the same name already exists. Obsidian’s URL handler opens the existing note and ignores the payload Shelf sent. Rename the existing note manually and try again.

— Cross-device. Obsidian Sync, iCloud, or Git can carry your vault between devices, and Shelf doesn’t need to know. Configure Obsidian’s sync; Shelf writes to the local copy.