Plugin: Kanban board over status frontmatter (#122)

[thetechjon]

Summary

Closes #122. New plugin at public/plugins/noteser-kanban/ surfacing a fullscreen Kanban board over the YAML frontmatter status: field (Obsidian convention).

Defaults (greenlit 2026-06-07)

• Status field: YAML frontmatter status: — Obsidian convention. Lifted straight from each NoteWithBody.frontmatter; the plugin never re-parses YAML.
• Columns: user-defined per board via a CSV setting (setSetting('columns', csv)). Fallbacks in order: (1) user CSV, (2) the distinct status values present in the vault, (3) hard-coded Todo / Doing / Done when no notes carry a status yet.
• Surface: plugin, not core. Matches Jon's standing rule that new features default to plugins.

Move-to mechanic (drag-and-drop replacement)

v1.2 VNodes only carry onClick / onChange / onSubmit / onKeyDown. There is no pointer-event channel through postMessage, so drag-to-Done as described in #122 cannot be expressed with the curated VNode set — docs/plugins-v1.2-impl-notes.md flags the same wall for #71 and the importer.

Each card carries a "Move to..." button. Click it: a small radio picker overlays the card with every other column plus Unsorted. Pick one: the plugin calls ctx.vault.write.updateNote(id, { frontmatter: { ...existing, status: chosen } }). Moving to Unsorted removes the status key entirely so the on-disk YAML stays clean instead of writing status: Unsorted. Every other frontmatter key is preserved.

If a v1.3 plan adds a pointer-event VNode (onDragStart, onDrop), the column strip can swap to native drag-and-drop without changing the wire-level write path.

Files added

public/plugins/noteser-kanban/manifest.json
public/plugins/noteser-kanban/main.js
src/plugins/kanbanPluginLogic.ts          (TS mirror of pure logic, per properties precedent)
src/plugins/__tests__/kanbanPlugin.test.ts

Perf

Measured against a synthetic 1,000-note vault. Times are pure-derive cost on the worker side; the host snapshot cost is shared by every v1.2 plugin and falls outside this plugin's responsibility.

• Cold derive (filter + resolve columns + group): 0.76 ms
• Avg of 10 hot runs with a filter applied: 1.13 ms
• Run trend: 2.79, 1.67, 0.98, 1.00, 1.01, 0.76, 0.92, 1.09, 0.56, 0.52 ms

Both well under the 500 ms board-open budget called out in the task brief. The filter input is debounced at 150 ms; vault-change events ride the host's existing 250 ms debounce and a 0 ms microdebounce to coalesce burst-of-saves into one re-derive.

Tests

src/plugins/__tests__/kanbanPlugin.test.ts — 34 tests, all green:

• extractStatus on string / missing / empty / array / non-string fixtures.
• parseColumnsCsv trims, dedupes case-insensitively, preserves order.
• resolveColumns honours CSV, falls back to vault statuses, falls back again to DEFAULT_COLUMNS.
• groupByStatus produces every declared column + Unsorted, matches case-insensitively, places untagged + non-matching notes in Unsorted.
• filterNotes matches title + status + body tag, ignores folder paths.
• moveTargets excludes the source column, appends Unsorted unless the source IS Unsorted.
• buildMovePatch preserves siblings, removes status on move-to-Unsorted, does not mutate input.
• Two integration tests drive the production main.js: the move-to writes through vault.write.updateNote with the right frontmatter, and the custom-columns CSV persists through setSetting.

Voice

User-facing strings (column headers, button labels, empty-state callout, toast errors) carry no em dashes, no contractions, and no hype.

Test plan

• npm run lint clean.
• npx tsc --noEmit zero errors.
• npm test -- --ci green (212 suites pass, 1 skipped pre-existing).
• Manual smoke: install via local-folder scan, add status: todo to several notes, run "Open Kanban board" from the palette, click "Move to..." on a card, pick a different column, confirm the note moves and frontmatter updates on disk.

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