TheBrain-like graph-based navigation in Obsidian with Excalidraw, Dataview, and Hover Editor (V2)

A new “brain navigation” workflow for Obsidian turns Excalidraw diagrams into a graph-style vault navigator—complete with color-coded nodes, parent/child link semantics, and support for aliases—while removing reliance on the Breadcrumbs plugin. The core shift in this version is replacing breadcrumbs with Dataview, specifically to avoid a common failure mode: breadcrumbs assumes file names are unique across the vault, but real vaults often contain identical names in different folders.

Node appearance is driven by tags. Daily notes and Excalidraw-linked pages can render with distinct prefixes, emoji, border colors, background colors, and font colors, all mapped through tag-based settings. In the settings, the user defines how each tag should look; tags can also be matched by prefix, so a single configuration can style a whole family of tags (e.g., “books” matching “books/books fiction/books self-help,” etc.). This makes the navigation graph visually encode meaning—rather than treating every node as the same generic link.

The graph also distinguishes between real files and “virtual nodes.” Red nodes indicate links that haven’t been created in Obsidian yet and appear dimmed in the vault until the target file exists. The script uses tag relationships to infer structure: a “child” tag produces child nodes, while a “parent” tag produces parent nodes. In the demonstration, “tomorrow” behaves as a child tag and “this week” as a parent tag, which changes how those not-yet-created targets appear in the graph.

Another practical improvement is display naming. When “display alias if available” is enabled, the node label uses the page alias rather than the raw file name—using the first alias if multiple exist. This helps the navigation graph stay readable even when underlying file names are technical or inconsistent.

On the navigation mechanics side, the script supports multiple nodes that share the same file name but live in different folders by treating them as separate nodes—something the earlier breadcrumbs approach struggled with. To make this work, the settings include a simplified breadcrumb-like direction model (up/down/lateral, described as “jump”) plus a list of data fields used from documents.

Installation and use are designed to be lightweight. The script is installed from the Excalidraw “script engine” store, then started from the Excalidraw menu. Users can also bind a hotkey in Obsidian settings to start/stop the navigation view, which enables editing the graph layout—dragging nodes, adding items, and saving custom views. The workflow extends to the Hover Editor plugin: the navigation can run inside a pinned hover window, switch between compact and full-screen modes, and keep tracking where the user is in the vault.

Finally, creating a navigation canvas is straightforward: start a new Excalidraw drawing, run the script to convert it into a brain navigation file, rename it, and pin it to favorites as the starting point for future vault navigation. Performance isn’t yet “instant,” but the author considers it fit for purpose and hints at a future conversion into a full Obsidian plugin based on additional ideas and feedback from GitHub or the comments.