---
date: 2026-03-09T11:04:48.857Z
title: "Memex Chat: Obsidian Plugin I built for myself"
deleted: 2026-03-09T12:20:17.422Z
summary: I've been using Obsidian for years as my primary thinking environment. At some point I got tired of switching between my notes and AI tools, copy-pasting context back and forth. So I built something that works the way I actually think.
category:
  - dev
  - AI
visibility: public
updated: 2026-03-09T20:54:10.442Z
syndication:
  - https://blog.giersig.eu/articles/memex-chat-obsidian-plugin/
  - https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:g4utqyolpyb5zpwwodmm3hht/post/3mgnqfu2jon2o
webmentionResults:
  sent: 0
  failed: 0
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  details:
    sent: []
    failed: []
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  timestamp: 2026-03-09T20:51:56.463Z
webmentionSent: true
mpSyndicateTo:
  - https://troet.cafe/@svemagie
permalink: https://blog.giersig.eu/articles/memex-chat-obsidian-plugin/
---

Memex Chat is an Obsidian plugin that lets you chat with your vault using Claude AI with proper context retrieval, not just keyword search.

What it does:

- Semantic vault search — a TF-IDF index over all your notes, no external API needed for retrieval
- Local embeddings — optional on-device semantic search using BGE Micro v2, fully offline after one model download (~22 MB)
- Auto context — relevant notes are automatically found and attached to your query before it even reaches Claude
- @ mentions — reference specific notes directly in your message with autocomplete
- Context preview — see and edit which notes are included before sending
- Related notes sidebar — always-on panel showing the most similar notes to whatever you have open, ranked by semantic similarity, frontmatter links, and shared tags
- Thread history — chats saved as Markdown in your vault, so nothing disappears
- Source links — every answer shows which notes were used as context
- Prompt buttons — configurable header buttons that extend Claude's system prompt (e.g. draft check, monthly review)

Installation is manual for now — download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release, drop them into .obsidian/plugins/memex-chat/, enable in Community Plugins, and add your Anthropic API key.

→ https://github.com/svemagie/memex-chat