feat(widgets): standalone .widget files — own leaf, embeds, agent-writable, link previews

[Leo310]

What

The "custom view" half of the widgets feature (renamed from "view" in this PR: it collided with reading view, workspace views and Bases' views, and said nothing about the thing itself). A widget kept on its own is a .widget file: exactly what a s2b-widget fence body holds (optional frontmatter, then HTML), bound to a FileView that fills the pane. It re-renders when the file changes on disk (so an agent edit accepted through the review flow lands there), follows renames and deletes like any file view, and — since Obsidian has no editor for the extension — carries a minimal source mode of its own (textarea, save/cancel, Cmd/Ctrl-S; refuses to save over a file that changed meanwhile) behind a header action. ![[Name.widget]] embeds and hover previews render through the embed registry the .chat previews already use.

The chat toolbar's "save as note" and "open as view" collapse into one button: save as a .widget file, which opens it. Copy-as-block stays for inline use.

Note links inside widgets preview like links in a note. Any element with data-note="Path.md" (or an <a href> holding a vault path) is a note link: click opens it (modifier-aware), hover reports its box, and the host lays an invisible proxy over that box and hands it to page preview under an "S2B Widgets" hover source. Pressing Cmd/Ctrl while already hovering re-triggers, matching Obsidian's behaviour for links in notes.

Why a file: a fence in a note put its HTML/JS into Obsidian's search and into the plugin's retrieval index. A .widget file is indexed by neither, and fences that do live in notes are replaced by a (widget: <title>) marker before indexing, so a note holding a dashboard stays findable by name without its code becoming chunks. manage_notes accepts .widget paths so the agent creates and revises widgets through the same staged review as notes; the widgets skill (renamed from views, unreleased) documents the file form and the link attribute.

Also fixed on the way: the frame runtime had been broken by a formatter-rewritten escape (a unit test now parses both frame scripts as JavaScript), and the render child gains a fill mode.

Caveats: Obsidian Sync only syncs unknown file types if "sync all other types" is enabled; links written inside a .widget file are not parsed by the metadata cache (links to the file work).

How I tested it

bun run check, format, lint, test pass. Live in the S2B WT2 slot vault on macOS desktop: a s2b-widget fence in a note renders; ![[X.widget]] embeds render at content height; opening a .widget file gives the leaf with the frame filling the pane and the edit/refresh actions, and the source editor round-trips. Link previews verified with trusted pointer and key events driven through the debugger protocol: hovering a link inside a frame with Cmd held opens Obsidian's popover, and pressing Cmd while already hovering opens it too. Not yet exercised live: the chat-toolbar save button end to end, an agent creating a .widget through manage_notes and its review, workspace restore after restart, and mobile.

AI assistance: Claude Code (Fable 5.1) designed and wrote the change from Leo's brief, the file-first decision and the rename he made in discussion; Leo has tested intermediate builds live and reported the issues fixed here.

Checklist

• bun run check, bun run format, bun run lint, and bun run test pass locally
• I tried the change in a real Obsidian vault (or explained above why that isn't applicable)
• I read CONTRIBUTING.md, including the section on AI assistance
• If this adds a provider, a bundled skill, a built-in tool, or changes manifest.json: I noted that the docs site needs updating (see "Documentation" in CONTRIBUTING.md) — the widgets skill and the .widget file type need documenting on the site; feat(views): render agent-generated views as sandboxed frames #505's merged views naming (fence s2b-view, views skill, viewsFolder) is superseded by this PR.

[greptile-apps]

Confidence Score: 5/5

The PR appears safe to merge; no actionable issue remains from the changes since the previous review.

Summary

This PR replaces the earlier custom-view feature with standalone widgets and adds the supporting file, rendering, editing, embedding, indexing, and agent workflows.

• Registers .widget files as dedicated Obsidian views with source editing and external-change protection.
• Renders s2b-widget fences, standalone files, embeds, hover previews, and modifier-aware note links through a sandboxed frame.
• Allows manage_notes to stage reviewed .widget operations.
• Restricts widget retrieval content to title and description while stripping widget source from indexed Markdown.
• Renames the bundled skill and settings from views to widgets.
• The only change since the previous review expands bundled-skill guidance for choosing subject-specific Lucide icons; no new correctness issue was identified.

Diagram

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart LR
  Chat[Chat s2b-widget fence] --> Renderer[WidgetRenderChild]
  File[Standalone .widget file] --> View[WidgetView]
  View --> Renderer
  Embed[Note embed or hover preview] --> EmbedHandler[Widget embed handler]
  EmbedHandler --> Renderer
  Renderer --> Frame[Sandboxed widget frame]
  Frame --> Links[Note links and previews]
  Frame --> Queries[Live vault queries]
  Agent[manage_notes] --> Review[Pending-change review]
  Review --> File
  File --> Index[Title and description indexing]

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