obsidian-lifeos: a PARA plugin for Obsidian that treats Dataview as optional

A vault that practises PARA, with the queries optional

obsidian-lifeos is an Obsidian plugin for the LifeOS workflow, which helps in practising the PARA method with periodic notes and with usememos. The repository is TypeScript, the licence is MIT, and the plugin is published under the package name `periodic-para` at version 1.29.2, while the project lives on GitHub as obsidian-lifeos and has its own site at lifeos.vip.

The interesting design decision is stated in the README with unusual clarity. Task, record and resource queries require Dataview to be installed and enabled separately, while quick capture, theme creation and native theme lists work without it. Setup and quick capture work without Dataview, and query views still require it and show installation, enablement or indexing guidance when it is missing.

That is a deliberate two-tier design, and it is the right one for a plugin that new users install on an empty vault. The parts that a person uses in the first ten minutes, the setup wizard and quick capture, have no external dependency. The parts that need a query engine, the task and record views, need Dataview, and the plugin does not bundle a query engine of its own.

The plugin requires Obsidian 1.4.0 or newer. The documentation points new users at the LifeOS-example vault, which the README recommends downloading to experience the workflow, and the plugin's own documentation site holds the tutorials.

The lineage is in the acknowledgements, and it explains the architecture. The PARA method comes from Tiago Forte, the PARA Starter Kit from cotemaxime, and the inspiration for periodic notes from obsidian-periodic-notes by liamcain. The project also builds on obsidian-dataview, whose query interface the plugin uses, and on Templater, which provides the decoupled template creation.

Theme notes work with or without PARA

The 1.29.0 release was described as theme notes without mandatory PARA, and that is the most consequential change for anyone who already has a vault.

The feature is that you can enable theme notes independently of PARA. You create tagged theme folders and index notes, associate quick captures with them, query tasks, records and files, and generate theme overviews in daily notes. The README and folder-name indexes, templates, list search and optional name synchronisation are all supported.

What the change means in practice is that a vault does not have to be organised around Projects, Areas, Resources and Archives to use the plugin's capture and query machinery. A user who dislikes the PARA taxonomy, or whose work does not fit it, can use themes instead. The example repository ships both a plain-theme example and blank vaults in all ten supported languages, so the two paths can be tried before committing.

The compatibility promise is stated plainly as well: existing PARA configuration and notes are preserved, and the first-run wizard never overwrites existing files. That is the detail that decides whether the setup wizard is safe to run on a vault you have already built. The selected workspace profile is kept for future repairs, which is what makes the wizard reversible.

The other thing the setup does is create a periodic-notes workspace with or without PARA in any of the ten supported languages, where the ten are English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.

Quick capture that writes into the daily note

The capture features are where most of the daily value sits, and the constraint that shapes them is that everything stays in daily-note Markdown.

Quick record and Quick task support continuous capture, native live preview, images, checklists, PARA theme associations, history, combined filters and safe editing. The result is that a captured thought ends up as Markdown inside the daily note rather than in a proprietary database, which means it is greppable, linkable and portable out of the vault without a conversion step.

Live preview and safe editing are the two details that matter for a capture tool used on a phone. A capture surface that renders as you type removes the temptation to leave the app and open the note manually, and safe editing is what stops a mis-tap from losing a half-written thought.

The built-in starter templates cover daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly notes, along with Projects, Areas, Resources and Archives notes, and there is an optional example workflow with a five-minute completion guide for making the first capture. The example can be removed safely while it remains unchanged, which is a detail that only makes sense if the plugin tracks whether the example has been edited.

For the note that records what was captured, the Today’s records command opens today's daily note at the record section, and the handover guide in the documentation is the thing to read before switching plugins, since the Pro plugin changes how that surface behaves.

Free plugin, paid Pro plugin, and AI as a third product

The commercial structure is described in the README in a way that is unusually precise, and it is worth reading rather than assuming.

Quick capture, basic task entry and topic links remain fully free. The Settings page has a Usage and upgrade section that offers shortcuts, a read-only preview of your folder settings, and an optional, collapsed comparison of calendar planning, advanced lists and project workflow scenarios with the independently paid LifeOS Pro plugin. The README states plainly that this plugin does not contain any paid extras and does not automatically install Pro.

The promotional section is described as well: it does not fetch remote ads, send telemetry, or upload notes, and opening the website is optional and includes only a fixed channel parameter. For a plugin that holds a person's daily notes, that is the detail that settles a question a user would otherwise have to ask.

The AI story is separate again. LifeOS Pro alone does not include AI, because AI requires the separate DeepAsk plugin and a supported model service or CLI configured by the user. The documentation links a separate DeepAsk AI for Obsidian plugin and a separate DeepAsk AI for Chrome extension.

The last part is the one a reader should not skip: Pro source code, private configuration and activation data are not part of this repository. So the paid product is not a branch of this code, and anything you want to see inside it is not available here.

The optional usememos integration, which lets captures go to a usememos instance, is configured separately from the paid parts.

The build pipeline and the release chore

The repository is a TypeScript Obsidian plugin with a fairly conventional modern toolchain, and the scripts show the shape of the work.

  "scripts": {
    "dev": "node esbuild.config.mjs",
    "build": "tsc -noEmit -skipLibCheck && node esbuild.config.mjs production",
    "test": "node scripts/test.mjs",
    "version": "node version-bump.mjs && git add manifest.json versions.json",
    "lint": "biome check . --diagnostic-level=warn ",
    "format": "prettier --write .",
    "prepare": "simple-git-hooks"
  },

A few things stand out. The build runs a type check first with `tsc -noEmit -skipLibCheck`, so type errors fail the build rather than being caught at runtime. The version script is not a release script, it is a chore: it runs `version-bump.mjs` and stages `manifest.json` and `versions.json`, which are the two files Obsidian reads to know the plugin version and the version list shown in the community plugins view. Keeping them in step is the kind of thing that goes wrong silently, so it is scripted.

Linting and formatting are split between two tools, Biome for linting and Prettier for formatting, and the pre-commit hook runs nano-staged through simple-git-hooks, which applies Prettier to Markdown, JSON and styles and both tools to JavaScript and TypeScript files. The package manager is pnpm, pinned to [email protected] with a pnpm-lock.yaml, and there is a `pnpm` overrides block in the manifest.

The runtime dependencies are also telling. The interface is built with React and antd, the Ant Design icons, dayjs for dates, and reduce-css-calc, which is a small library for evaluating CSS calc expressions in JavaScript, the kind of dependency a rich editor needs. `tyme4ts` is a Chinese calendar and date library, and semver is used for version comparison. The dev dependencies include Obsidian itself at 1.8.7 and obsidian-dataview at 0.5.68, the latter because the plugin builds against Dataview's query interface.

Testing runs through `node scripts/test.mjs`, and the repository has a `tests/` directory, a `docs/` directory with the guides the README links to, a `biome.json` configuration, and a `.husky/` directory for the git hooks.

Release pace and what the documentation does not settle

The project is being worked on quickly. The last push was on 2026-10-16, the same day as the 1.29.2 release, described as theme overviews and safer upgrades. Before that came 1.29.1 on 2026-10-12, theme capture and mobile usability fixes, and 1.29.0 on 2026-10-10, theme notes without mandatory PARA.

Three releases in a week, each with a distinct theme, is a fast cadence for a plugin, and it tells you the theme feature is the active area of development. It also means that a vault set up against one release may look different against the next, particularly around the theme note surfaces.

There are two things the documentation leaves open. The first is what happens to a vault that was configured before the theme notes work existed, beyond the promise that existing PARA configuration and notes are preserved. The plugin documents the migration path for Pro users in a handover guide, and there is a separate guide on dependency guidance and query upgrades for the Dataview side, but the README does not describe a single command that migrates an old vault onto the new profile.

The second is the boundary between the free plugin and Pro in practical terms. The Settings page offers a read-only preview of your folder settings and a collapsed comparison of the Pro scenarios, which tells you what exists but not what each one does to your vault once enabled.

For a first-time user the path is clear anyway. The README recommends downloading the LifeOS-example vault, and the example repository includes a plain-theme example and blank vaults in all ten languages, so the fastest way to evaluate the plugin is to open a prepared vault rather than to configure an empty one.

Editorial conclusion

obsidian-lifeos suits an Obsidian user who wants a structured vault with a PARA layout, daily and periodic notes, and capture that writes straight into the daily note, and who is willing to install Dataview for the query views. It does not suit someone who wants the AI features, because those come from the separate DeepAsk plugin, and it does not suit a user who expects the paid Pro features to be in the free plugin. Before starting, download the LifeOS-example vault as the documentation recommends, and decide whether your vault will be PARA-based or theme-based, because the plugin now supports both and the wizard keeps the profile for later repairs.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: MIT
2. Project website
3. quanru/obsidian-lifeos on GitHub
4. README
5. Releases