VS Code Markdown Notes

Use [[wiki-links]] and #tags for fast-navigation between notes kept in in a VS Code workspace. Quickly create new notes from a Tilte Case Note Name.

There are many great note-taking applications (Notational Velocity, nvalt, Bear, FSNotes), but few of them offer the extensibility of VS Code and the ability to use Vim bindings for editing notes.

This extension provides a number of the best features invented by these other great apps.

You can install it from the VSCode Marketplace. See also my other customizations for note-taking in this blog post: Suping Up VS Code as a Markdown Notebook.

[[wiki-links]]

A popular feature in Roam Research and Bear is the ability to quickly reference other notes using "Cross-Note Links" in the [[wiki-link]] style.

VS Code Markdown notes provides syntax highlighting, auto-complete, Go to Definition (editor.action.revealDefinition), and Peek Definition (editor.action.peekDefinition) support for wiki-links to notes in a workspace.

By default, the extension assumes each markdown file in a workspace has a unique name, so that note.md will resolve to the file with this name, regardless of whether or not this file exists in any subdirectory path. This tends to be a bit cleaner, but if you want support for multiple files with the same name, in settings.json set "vscodeMarkdownNotes.workspaceFilenameConvention": "relativePaths", and you'll get completions like note1/note.md and ../note2/note.md.

#tags

Syntax highlighting for #tags.

New Note command

Provides a command for quickly creating a new note.

You can bind this to a keyboard shortcut by adding to your keybindings.json:

    {
        "key": "alt+n",
        "command": "vscodeMarkdownNotes.newNote",
    },

Screenshots

Intellisense Completion for Wiki Links, uniqueFilenames

Intellisense Completion for Wiki Links, relativePaths

Syntax Highlighting for Tags and Wiki Links

Peek and Go to Definition for Wiki Links

cmd+shift+f to Search Workspace for Notes with #tag

New Note Command

dev

Run npm install first.

FAQ

• "Autocomplete / Intellisense is not working - why?"

  • Make sure that quick suggestions are enabled in Markdown. Put this in settings.json:

  "[markdown]": {
     "editor.quickSuggestions": true
  } 
  

• "New note is not working - why?"

  • New Note works only when you are in a workspace. Look here for more information on workspaces in VS Code.

Known Issues

• Filename completion seems to be triggering when not in the [[ context.
• The ctrl+o VSCodeVim jumplist shortcut does not return you to the correct place after using "Go to Definition" (ctrl+]): VSCodeVim/Vim#3277 (The VSCode Go Back command (ctrl+-) does work, however.)
• This extension sets the wordPattern for 'markdown' in order to (1) enable proper completion of relative paths and (2) make it such that if you cmd+shift+f on a #tag the search will prefill with "#tag" and not just "tag":
  vscode.languages.setLanguageConfiguration('markdown', { wordPattern: /([\#\.\/\\\w_]+)/ });

TODO

• Add command to create file based on name in the wiki-link under the cursor
• Add command to create new note with name + heading
• Provide better support for ignore patterns, eg, don't complete file.md if it is within ignored_dir/
• Should we support filename without extension, eg, assume [[file]] is a reference to file.md?
• Should we support links to headings? eg, file.md#heading-text?
• Add syntax highlighting and search for #tags. See also

Development and Release

To create a new release,

npm install
# bump version number in package.json
npm run vpackage # package the release, creates ,vsix
npm run vpublish # publish to store, see https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension
# Will prompt for Azure Devops Personal Access Token, get fresh one at:
# https://dev.azure.com/andrewkortina/
# On "Error: Failed Request: Unauthorized(401)"
# see: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-vsce/issues/11
# The reason for returning 401 was that I didn't set the Accounts setting to all accessible accounts.

To install the vsix locally:

1. Select Extensions (Ctrl + Shift + X)
2. Open More Action menu (ellipsis on the top) and click Install from VSIX…
3. Locate VSIX file and select.
4. Reload VSCode.

Helpful Links

• completion: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-extension-samples/blob/master/completions-sample/src/extension.ts
• syntax: https://flight-manual.atom.io/hacking-atom/sections/creating-a-legacy-textmate-grammar/
• vscode syntax: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/language-extensions/syntax-highlight-guide