---
date: 2026-03-20T13:02:00.000Z
title: Memex Chat - Obsidian Plugin I built for myself
summary: Memex Chat is an Obsidian plugin enabling vault conversations through Claude AI, leveraging proper context retrieval instead of simple keyword matching.
category:
  - on/memex
  - dev
gardenStage: revisit
visibility: Public
aiTextLevel: "1"
aiCodeLevel: "2"
aiTools: Claude
updated: 2026-04-15T08:32:41.789Z
webmentionResults:
  sent: 0
  failed: 0
  skipped: 0
  details:
    sent: []
    failed: []
    skipped: []
  timestamp: 2026-03-22T11:14:09.591Z
webmentionSent: true
mpUrl: https://blog.giersig.eu/articles/memex-chat-obsidian-plugin-i/
permalink: /articles/memex-chat-obsidian-plugin-i/
---

Memex Chat is an Obsidian plugin enabling vault conversations through Claude AI, leveraging proper context retrieval instead of simple keyword matching.

## Capabilities

The plugin provides these key features:

- **Semantic vault search:** TF-IDF indexing across all notes without external APIs
- **Local embeddings:** Optional offline semantic search using BGE Micro v2 (~22 MB model)
- **Hybrid search:** When embeddings are enabled, TF-IDF keyword ranking and local semantic embeddings are combined via Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) — neither score space needs normalization, and results are better than either engine alone. Falls back to TF-IDF-only while embeddings are still indexing.
- **Automatic context:** Relevant notes automatically attached to queries before reaching Claude
- **@ mentions:** Direct note references with autocomplete support
- **Active note command:** "Memex Chat: Aktive Notiz als Kontext" opens a new thread pre-filled with the current note as explicit context, asking Claude to explain and connect it with other vault concepts
- **Context preview:** View and edit included notes before sending
- **Related notes sidebar:** Always-visible panel showing semantically similar notes, ranked by similarity, frontmatter links, and shared tags
- **Thread history:** Chats saved as Markdown in your vault with inline renaming
- **Message actions:** Copy assistant replies or save them as new notes
- **Source links:** Answers display which notes provided context
- **Prompt buttons:** Configurable header buttons extending Claude's system prompt (e.g., draft checking, monthly reviews); date-mode buttons retrieve notes by date range
- **System context file:** Pin vault notes to the system prompt for persistent personal context
- **Manual installation:** Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from releases into `.obsidian/plugins/memex-chat/`, enable in Community Plugins, add Anthropic API key
---
## Resources
**Repository:** https://github.com/svemagie/obsidian-memex-chat

Together with the [[Thinking in Public]] approach, this creates an active knowledge space rather than a passive archive.