ignis/apps/ignis-server/server/demo-template/What works.md

What works

Most of Obsidian's features work in Ignis. Some have gaps or workarounds, and Ignis also adds things that make sense for running Obsidian in a browser.

Obsidian features that work

• All core editor features: markdown, canvas, bases, and the command palette.
• Context menus throughout the UI.
• Image rendering, inline image URLs, and image paste from the clipboard.
• Print to PDF, via a hidden popup iframe.
• Mobile UI auto-activates when the window is under 600 px wide.
• Themes and CSS snippets.
• Most community plugins built on Obsidian's plugin API.
• Cross-origin plugin requests via requestUrl and fetch, proxied through the server.
• Obsidian Sync, in self-hosted deployments with a logged-in browser tab open.

What doesn't work

• Plugins that depend on Node native modules or child_process won't load.
• Streaming zlib classes (createGzip, createDeflate, etc.) aren't implemented. The synchronous and callback variants work via pako.
• The synchronous file picker (dialog.showOpenDialogSync), used by plugins like Importer, has a staged-files workaround: the shim asks you to pick once and serves the result on retry. Usable but rough.
• safeStorage is passthrough by design: isEncryptionAvailable() returns false and encrypt/decrypt are no-ops, so anything plugins store via safeStorage ends up as plaintext on disk. A server-side encrypted option is planned but not yet implemented.

What Ignis adds

Vaults

• Custom UI for Obsidian's multi-vault support. Create, open, switch, rename, and delete vaults.
• Different vaults can be loaded in different browser tabs.

Files

• File upload from the local machine: ribbon icon, right-click on a folder -> Upload file, or drag-and-drop into the UI.
• File and folder download: right-click any note for Download, or any folder for Download as ZIP.

Multi-tab and workspaces

• Live file sync between browser tabs via WebSocket. Open the same vault in two tabs and edits propagate within a second.
• Saved workspaces opened in separate browser tabs via a ?workspace= URL parameter, so each tab can hold a different layout of the same vault.
• An "Open workspace in tab" command added to the command palette by the bridge plugin.

Sync

• Obsidian Headless is implemented as a server-side plugin for continuous sync without needing an active browser tab. Only one of Obsidian Sync or Obsidian Headless can run per vault.

Server integration

• Server-side plugin system, separate from Obsidian's community plugin system. (WIP)
• Ignis-specific settings shown as their own tabs inside Obsidian's Settings modal.
• Status bar indicators for server state and headless sync activity.

Performance note

• Pre-compressed bootstrap response covering vault info, vault list, metadata tree, and plugin list.
• Indexer pre-fetch warms the content cache so Obsidian's startup index hits cache instead of the network.
• LRU content cache (50 MB by default) so Ignis doesn't hold the whole vault in memory at once. Memory use stays bounded regardless of vault size.
• Write coalescing for slow filesystems (rclone, FUSE, NFS, SMB).