Setup

The basic idea

Riebeckite turns Markdown files from a configured folder into a site. An Obsidian vault is also a Markdown folder, so you can point content.directory at the vault.

You do not have to rebuild an existing vault for Riebeckite. Riebeckite reads Markdown from the configured folder; it does not rewrite your notes as part of normal dev, check, doctor, inspect, or build commands. Keep using Obsidian as your editor, and opt in only the notes you want to publish.

Each note decides whether it is published through frontmatter.

---
title: Published note
publish: true
---

Notes without publish: true are not published by the default explicit publish strategy. This lets you keep private notes and public articles in the same vault.

Using an existing vault as-is

An Obsidian vault is a folder full of Markdown files, and Riebeckite also reads Markdown from a specified folder, so pointing content.directory at the vault is enough to use it as content.

For example, an existing vault such as:

notes/
|- Welcome.md
|- Programming/
|  `- Flutter.md
|- private/
|  `- memo.md
`- .obsidian/

can be read by Riebeckite without changes. Running the usual:

dev
check
doctor
inspect
build

does not reorganize the vault or rewrite its Markdown on your behalf. You keep editing notes in Obsidian exactly as before.

Templater templates

When the vault has the Obsidian Templater plugin configured, Riebeckite reads .obsidian/plugins/templater-obsidian/data.json and excludes the configured templates_folder before scanning Markdown or parsing frontmatter. Templates therefore do not enter the content manifest, SSG, or the development server.

Riebeckite does not execute Templater code. A Templater expression in an ordinary note remains ordinary Markdown and does not exclude that note. If the Templater setting or its template folder is unavailable, no automatic exclusion is applied; use content.exclude when you want to exclude a folder explicitly.

Choosing which notes to publish

The default publish rule makes a note public only when its frontmatter contains:

publish: true

For example:

---
title: Published note
publish: true
---
 
This note is published.

By contrast:

---
title: Private note
---
 
This is a private note.

has no publish: true, so it is not published.

flowchart TD
    Vault["Obsidian vault"]
 
    Vault --> A["Public article<br/>publish: true"]
    Vault --> B["Draft"]
    Vault --> C["Private note"]
 
    A --> Site["Public site"]
    B -.->|"not published"| Site
    C -.->|"not published"| Site

This is why you can keep published articles and private notes in the same vault.