Daily Note Task Tagging

Automatically import tasks from your daily notes into Project Planner by tagging them with a simple hashtag pattern. Write tasks naturally in your daily notes and watch them appear in the plugin instantly.

Quick Start

  1. Enable Daily Note Sync

    Go to Settings → Daily Notes → Enable Daily Note Sync and toggle it on.

  2. Set a Default Project

    Choose the project that will receive tasks when no project-specific tag is used.

  3. Tag Your Tasks

    In any daily note, write a checklist item with the #planner tag:

    - [ ] Finish quarterly report #planner
  4. Watch Them Appear

    Project Planner detects the tag and imports the task into the default project automatically.

How It Works

The daily note scanner watches files in the configured folders for changes. When a file is modified, the scanner:

  1. Parses the file for lines matching the pattern - [ ] Task text #planner (or your custom tag).
  2. Extracts metadata such as priority indicators, due dates, and additional tags.
  3. Routes each task to the correct project based on the tag (e.g., #planner/Work routes to the "Work" project).
  4. Checks for duplicates using a location-based identifier to prevent re-importing existing tasks.

Basic Usage

Simple Import

Tag any checklist item with your configured tag pattern to import it into the default project:

## Today's Tasks
- [ ] Reply to client email #planner
- [ ] Update project timeline #planner
- [ ] Review design mockups #planner
- [x] Morning standup #planner

Project-Specific Import

Append a project name after the tag to route a task to a specific project:

- [ ] Deploy staging environment #planner/Work
- [ ] Book dentist appointment #planner/Personal
- [ ] Write blog post outline #planner/Side Project
Note

Project names with spaces or hyphens are matched case-insensitively. #planner/Side Project and #planner/side-project both match a project named "Side Project".

Advanced Features

Priority Indicators

Add priority markers anywhere in the task text:

- [ ] Critical bug fix !!! #planner        → High priority
- [ ] Update dependencies !! #planner       → Medium priority
- [ ] Refactor CSS ! #planner               → Low priority
- [ ] Fix auth flow (high) #planner         → High priority
- [ ] Clean up logs (low) #planner          → Low priority
  • !!! or (high) → High priority
  • !! or (medium) → Medium priority
  • ! or (low) → Low priority

Due Dates

Specify a due date using any of these formats:

- [ ] Submit report 📅 2025-03-15 #planner
- [ ] Submit report due:2025-03-15 #planner
- [ ] Submit report @2025-03-15 #planner

Additional Tags

Any other hashtags in the line (besides the planner tag) are imported as task tags:

- [ ] Fix login bug #planner #urgent #backend

This creates a task with tags urgent and backend.

Task Status

  • - [ ] → imported as an incomplete task
  • - [x] → imported as a completed task

Configuration

Settings

  • Enable Daily Note Sync — Master toggle. When off, no scanning occurs.
  • Tag Pattern — The hashtag prefix used to identify tasks. Default: #planner. You can change this to any value (e.g., #todo, #pp).
  • Scan Folders — Comma-separated list of vault-relative folder paths to watch (e.g., Daily Notes, Journal). Leave empty to scan the entire vault.
  • Default Project (required) — The project that receives tasks tagged without a project suffix.

Manual Scanning

If you need to trigger a scan manually, you have three options:

  1. Settings panel: Click Scan Daily Notes Now in the Daily Notes settings section.
  2. Ribbon icon: Click the Project Planner ribbon icon and choose Scan Daily Notes.
  3. Command palette: Open the command palette (Ctrl+P) and run Project Planner: Scan Daily Notes.

Automatic Scanning

When enabled, the scanner uses Obsidian's file watcher to detect changes in real time. Scanning is debounced with a 1-second delay to batch rapid edits efficiently. Only the modified file is re-scanned—not the entire vault.

Task Metadata

Each imported task includes additional metadata:

  • Source link: A backlink to the exact daily note and line where the task was found.
  • Description: The original Markdown line is stored in the task description for reference.
  • Unique ID: A UUID is generated and associated with the task's file path and line number to enable duplicate detection.

Best Practices

Daily Notes Template

## Tasks
- [ ] #planner

## Notes
...

Meeting Notes

## Action Items — Sprint Review
- [ ] Update roadmap with Q2 goals !!! #planner/Work #roadmap
- [ ] Share meeting recording #planner/Work
- [ ] Follow up with design team 📅 2025-02-20 #planner/Work

Project Journal

## Research Log — 2025-02-13
Explored new charting library. Need to:
- [ ] Benchmark Chart.js vs D3 performance #planner/Side Project #research
- [ ] Write comparison doc #planner/Side Project due:2025-02-18

Avoiding Duplicates

The scanner uses location-based tracking to uniquely identify each task by its file path and original line content. This means:

  • Editing a task's text in the same file updates the existing imported task.
  • Moving a task line to a different file creates a new imported task (the old one remains).
  • A task's identity is tied to the combination of file + content hash, not just the text.

Limitations

  • One-way sync: Tasks are imported from daily notes into Project Planner, but changes made in the plugin are not written back to the daily note.
  • No deletion sync: Removing a tagged line from a daily note does not delete the imported task.
  • No subtask support: Only top-level checklist items are imported; nested items are ignored.
  • No dependency support: Dependency relationships cannot be expressed in daily note syntax.

Future Enhancements

  • Two-way sync back to daily notes
  • Subtask import from nested checklist items
  • Inline due-date and priority editing from the plugin
  • Support for weekly and periodic note scanning

Troubleshooting

Tasks Not Importing

  1. Confirm Enable Daily Note Sync is turned on.
  2. Verify the tag pattern matches what you typed (default is #planner).
  3. Check that the file is inside one of the configured Scan Folders (or that the field is empty for vault-wide scanning).
  4. Ensure the line uses the Markdown checklist format: - [ ] or - [x] .
  5. Make sure a Default Project is selected in settings.

Wrong Project Assignment

  • Verify the project name after the tag matches an existing project exactly (case-insensitive).
  • If no matching project is found, the task falls back to the default project.

Tasks Not Updating

  • Edits must be in the same file and on the same line to be recognized as an update.
  • If you moved the task to a different line or file, a new task may be created instead.

Debugging

Open the developer console (Ctrl+Shift+I) and filter for scanner messages:

[ProjectPlanner] Daily note scan: found 3 tagged tasks in "2025-02-13.md"
[ProjectPlanner] Imported task "Reply to client email" → project "Work"
[ProjectPlanner] Skipped duplicate task at Daily Notes/2025-02-13.md:5