Suggest wiki links

[fdaguin]

Please Select if your Request is Either something new or an Enhancement

• [ ] Enhancement of an existing Feature.
• [x] Request of a new feature.

Please select the area your request applys to. (Multiple selections are Possible)

• [ ] Onboard. Initial vault setup and import/export pods
• [ ] Create. Note creation, lookup, snippets and templates
• [x] Retrieve. Backlinks, references, graph view
• [x] Structure. Refactoring, multi-vault and schemas
• [ ] Publish. Sharing your repo with the world
• [ ] Misc (Choose this if your not sure)

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

When taking notes, when a word or a group of words is referencing another note, I want a wiki link to be created. Doing this manually works, however:

• linking notes can be time consuming, even with IntelliSense
• when adding new notes that can be referenced in older notes, I will have to manually go through each old notes to create the missing wiki links

Describe the solution you'd like

I want Dendron to scan my notes and to suggest wiki links that can be created to reference other notes when detecting a word or group of words that either matches:

• the name of another note
• the title of another note

Let's consider a vault with 3 notes:

ide.vscode.md:

---
title: Visual Studio Code
---
...

language.markdown.md:

---
title: Markdown
---
...

pkm.tool.dendron.md:

---
title: Dendron
---

Dendron is a local-first, markdown based, hierarchical note-taking application built on top of Visual Studio Code and friends.

This feature will allow to detect and suggest the following wiki links in pkm.tool.dendron.md..

---
title: Dendron
---

-Dendron is a local-first, markdown based, hierarchical note-taking application built on top of Visual Studio Code and friends.
+Dendron is a local-first, [[language.markdown]] based, hierarchical note-taking application built on top of [[ide.vscode]] and friends.

by resolving:

• markdown with the name of the note language.markdown.md
• Visual Studio Code with the title of the note ide.vscode.md

At least, I want those suggestions on the currently opened notes. At best, I want Dendron to scan all the notes in my vault(s) and to comes up with suggestions for each notes.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Keep creating the wiki links manually.

Additional context

This feature is conceptually similar to a linter. While it can be implemented as a CLI, a strong VSCode integration is preferable. Therefore, I suggest:

• a trigger (how the scan is launched?):
  • on currently opened notes, either:
  • saving a note
  • opening a note (preferred)
  • on all the notes in a vault
  • launching a Dendron command
• a reporter (how the results are reported?), either:
  • a dedicated WebviewPanel
  • the VSCode Diagnostic API to create hints (preferred); this can be enhanced by suggesting a quick fix with a list of matching notes (see Code Spell Checker for example)

[kpathakota]

@fdaguin - good point on helping get more out of note-linking.

One thing though is that we currently have Dendron: Insert Note Link to help you link notes together. Hope that will make it faster to link notes (without relying on intellisense)

However, your point on new notes requiring you to manually go through the knowledge base and re-link things still stands.

[fdaguin]

One thing though is that we currently have Dendron: Insert Note Link to help you link notes together. Hope that will make it faster to link notes (without relying on intellisense)

I didn't know about this command, thanks!

[maninalift]

This is like the "unlinked mentions" feature in Obsidian and "unlinked references" in Roam. These applications automatically display text matching the title of the current document in other notes, right after the back-links (or "linked mentions"), allowing you you spot connections and quickly add connections.

[fdaguin]

@maninalift Actually, those Roam Research and Obsidian features were ported in Dendron through #909 as "backlinks candidates". This current issue is requesting a scan feature across all available vaults, instead of the currently opened note.

[maninalift]

@fdaguin oh wow, that's great, thanks for clearing that up for me!

[ScriptAutomate]

I've opened a related GitHub discussion:

• https://github.com/dendronhq/dendron/discussions/3583