Graph

Last updated: 2026-07-05

Plainva’s graph is a working tool, not a poster: it shows you where you are, what is connected, what is missing — and you can act on it directly. There is ONE graph engine with three faces.

Context graph (right sidebar)

Open the Graph section in the right sidebar. It shows the active note in the center, the folder structure above, for folder overviews (index.md) the contained notes below, incoming references on the left and outgoing ones on the right. Relations from databases carry their property name as the label.

• Clicking a node opens the note (the focus rotates with you).
• Ctrl/Cmd+click opens in a split, middle-click in a new tab.
• Below it, up to three suggestions appear: notes that mention your active note (but do not link it), are often linked together with it, share a similar neighborhood, or share a rare tag. Link writes a real wiki link into the source note; Dismiss suggestion remembers your decision.

Vault map (its own tab)

Open the map with Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+G, via the graph icon in the action rail on the far left, or via the command palette (Open graph). It opens in its own tab. Instead of a hairball you see your real folder structure as bubbles — double-click a bubble to unfold its notes, Collapse all folders goes back. The layout is deterministic: the same map looks the same every time you open it. Drag a node and it stays pinned (small dot); Reset layout clears all pins. Pins are stored per device.

Tools in the header bar:

• Edge styles at a glance (legend, bottom left): relations are solid accent lines with a label, links are dashed, embeds dotted.
• Search dims everything that does not match. Filter by type (OKF) and tag; edge kinds (Links, Relations, Embeds) toggle individually.
• Focus on selection reduces the map to a selected note plus 1–3 neighborhood hops.
• Heatmap brightens recently edited notes (7/30/90 days) — “what was I working on?”
• Time travel shows notes by their creation date; the slider replays your vault’s growth. The date comes from a date/datum property, else from the file creation date (an approximation for cloud-only vaults).

Working on the map:

• Drag one node onto another: Plainva offers to write a text link — or directly a matching relation from your databases (if the relation allows exactly one entry, Plainva asks before replacing).
• Right-click a node: Open, Peek, Open in split, New connected note, Rename (with vault-wide link updates), Bookmark, Delete.
• Right-click empty space: New note, Reset layout, Export as PNG/SVG.
• Clicking an edge bundle between folders lists the individual links; hovering an edge shows the sentence the link lives in.
• Shift+drag selects multiple notes (footer: bookmark/delete the selection).

Cleaning up

The Clean up button opens a worklist with three tabs: Orphans (notes without connections), Broken links (targets that do not exist — Create note creates them) and Mentions (Scan vault finds places where a note is named but not linked; Link turns the occurrence into a wiki link). The map’s footer shows the orphan count — clicking it opens the panel.

Graph as a database view

Every .base database can get a Graph view (add view → Graph): the database’s rows become nodes, your relations become labeled edges. In the header bar you pick the edge properties, Color by a select property, Size by a number and whether external targets (relations pointing out of the database) appear. The view is saved Obsidian-compatibly — Obsidian shows the same file as a table.

Limits

• The graph shows notes (files), not individual paragraphs.
• Pins and dismissed suggestions live under .plainva/ and do not travel with sync — the base layout is identical on every device.
• Suggestions are pure vault analyses; nothing leaves your machine.