An AI janitor for your Obsidian hoard

What it does

Note Companion is a desktop-only Obsidian plugin that ingests messy raw material—YouTube links, audio recordings, unstructured text—and attempts to impose order. It transcribes media, suggests folders and tags, formats notes, and offers a chat interface that can reference specific files or tags in your vault. The plugin operates through either a paid cloud service, your own API keys, or a self-hosted backend.

The interesting bit

The project is essentially a workflow automation layer glued to multiple AI providers, but it is unusually honest about its boundaries: it admits it is desktop-only, that its separate mobile app is stalled, and that cloud features cost money after a week. The meeting recorder is the standout feature, turning a raw recording into a structured note with embedded audio, transcript, and action items without leaving Obsidian.

Key highlights

• Desktop-only (Windows, macOS, Linux); the plugin manifest explicitly blocks mobile Obsidian
• Three operational modes: cloud subscription, bring-your-own API keys, or self-hosted Docker backend
• Auto-organization engine suggests folders, tags, titles, and templates for raw “Inbox” notes
• Transcribes YouTube videos even when standard captions are unavailable, plus local audio and video files
• Vault-aware chat supports @mentions for files, folders, and tags to ground responses in your actual notes
• Broad provider support: OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Groq, and Ollama/local models via custom base URLs

Caveats

• Cloud access requires a paid subscription after a 7-day trial; self-hosting is free but you bring the infrastructure
• The companion mobile app is real but development is paused, so don’t expect a seamless phone-to-desktop pipeline
• Large audio/video files may hit size limits or require compression depending on your chosen provider

Verdict

Worth a look if you live in Obsidian desktop and treat your vault like a dumping ground for meeting recordings, lecture links, and voice memos. Skip it if you are mobile-first or unwilling to either pay for cloud convenience or manage a self-hosted backend.