Obsidian AI Writer: Draft and Revise From Your Notes
An AI writing plugin for Obsidian lets you draft and revise documents directly from your vault notes. Here is how to keep facts accurate and preserve the instructions that make each revision consistent.
Updated 5 min read
An AI writer plugin for Obsidian lets you draft new documents or revise existing ones using the notes already in your vault as source material. The main challenge is keeping the output faithful to those notes while preserving the tone and structure instructions that make future drafts consistent. Tools like fenbs store your writing brief and reusable editing instructions outside Obsidian so they travel across sessions and assistants.
This guide covers how to set up an AI writing workflow in Obsidian, how to keep drafts grounded in your notes, and how to save the prompts and preferences that make the next revision faster.
What an Obsidian AI writing plugin does
Most AI writing plugins for Obsidian work by sending selected note content and a prompt to an external AI provider, then inserting the response into your vault. The plugin handles the API connection; you control which notes to include and what you ask the model to produce.
Common uses include drafting a first version of a document from research notes, rewriting a rough draft for clarity or tone, and extracting a structured outline from unorganized notes. Some plugins keep a persistent prompt template so you can apply the same instructions to different notes without retyping them.
For a broader look at AI plugins in Obsidian beyond writing, see the Obsidian AI plugin guide. For AI-assisted reporting, see AI report writer.
How to draft from vault notes without losing the facts
The risk with AI drafting is that the model fills gaps with plausible-sounding content that is not in your notes. The prompt design is the main safeguard.
- Pick the source notes explicitly. Include only the notes that contain facts you want in the draft. A tighter selection reduces the chance of the model drawing on unrelated material.
- Instruct the model to stay within the provided notes. Add a line like "Use only the information in these notes. Do not add facts that are not present." to your prompt.
- Ask it to flag gaps. A phrase such as "If information needed for the draft is missing from the notes, say so rather than guessing" saves you from discovering invented facts after editing.
- Review the draft against the source notes. For each factual claim in the draft, confirm it appears in a source note. Remove or rewrite anything the notes do not support.
- Save the final verified draft back to your vault with a note listing which source files it drew from.
How to revise a draft using AI
Revision prompts differ from drafting prompts. You are asking the model to improve something that already exists, so the instructions need to be precise about what to change and what to preserve.
Useful revision instructions include the target reading level, the voice (first or third person, formal or conversational), specific sections to shorten or expand, and any phrases or formats to avoid. Write these as a short style note and include it in every revision prompt so the result is consistent across sessions.
Make one type of change per revision pass. Ask for clarity edits in one pass, tone adjustments in another, and length cuts in a third. Mixing instructions leads to a result that partially satisfies each goal and fully satisfies none.
Saving writing instructions so they survive beyond the session
Obsidian does not share context between AI sessions automatically. A style note you wrote today is invisible to a different assistant next week unless you explicitly include it in the prompt again. If you work with a team or switch between AI apps, the instructions need a shared home.
Keep writing briefs and style instructions in one place
fenbs stores your writing briefs and reusable editing instructions in its Skills and prompts section. Add the style rules for a document, the audience description, and any recurring formatting preferences. Any connected assistant reads those instructions as part of its starting context, so you do not retype them for each session.
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Preserving approved changes and context across sessions
A writing project often spans many sessions: research in week one, drafting in week two, revisions in week three. Each session should know what was decided in the previous one. Which version of the draft was approved? Which tone note was accepted? Which section was deliberately left short?
Record accepted decisions as context notes rather than relying on chat history. "Section 3 was shortened at the client's request on October 14" is the kind of fact a new session needs to avoid undoing the previous one's work. Writing it down once means neither you nor a future assistant has to guess what was deliberate and what was a draft.
How to do this with fenbs
- Create a free account and open a project for the writing work the vault supports.
- Add the document as a task. In the task note, list the source Obsidian notes by title and describe the goal of the draft.
- Write your style rules and recurring instructions as a skill in fenbs under Skills and prompts. Include the target audience, voice, and any formatting rules.
- Draft or revise using your Obsidian AI writing plugin. Verify facts against source notes.
- Record accepted editorial decisions as context notes in fenbs: what changed, why, and which version was approved. Connect an AI assistant from Integrations so future sessions read these before starting.
For paragraph-level AI writing help, see AI paragraph writer. To explore AI options beyond Obsidian, see how to use AI at work.