KTL Registrar Plugin

Overview

KTL Registrar Plugin (src/main.ts) is the plugin’s lifecycle shell. It registers:

• fifteen commands: validate-vault, validate-active, scaffold-root-header, plus find, fix, affordance and navigation commands (Commands and settings has the full, current id list);
• a clickable status-bar indicator (LOKF ✓ / LOKF ⚠ N / LOKF ✖ N / LOKF: no bundle);
• the collapsible side-panel report view.

A person may run Validate active note (the command, or a status-bar click) on a note excluded by settings or outside every configured bundle root. The plugin says so in a Notice, instead of clearing the status bar to LOKF: — with no explanation. Every other outcome (clean, unreadable, N findings) already produced one. The debounced file-open path that fires on every navigation stays silent by design; only an explicit ask gets told why nothing happened.

Its settings are not its own (2026-09-14). loadSettings is one call to vocab.ts’s import-free mergeSavedSettings and one Object.assign. Defaults come from the pinned manifest, and saved values go over them. A vocabulary list still equal to the pre-schema hard-coded default is refreshed to the manifest’s, while an edited one is preserved. The rule moved out of main.ts so the smoke test could reach it, which is the boundary this plugin draws generally.

It caches the bundle-root base_iri, read once per scan from index.md and invalidated on a create, modify, delete or rename of that one file, so opening notes doesn’t re-read the root on every keystroke. It debounces file-open validation by 150ms, so arrowing through a file list doesn’t parse a note per keystroke.

The plugin neither detects nor recommends any other plugin. An earlier design carried three things:

• a commented-out detectOkfValidator, reading Obsidian’s undocumented app.plugins;
• a one-time notice recommending a separate OKF v0.2 validator;
• a settings action deep-linking to one.

All three were removed on 2026-09-12, once the OKF v0.2 base layer was checked here directly (see Why KTL Registrar). The one plugin it names in code is its sibling KTL Curator, as a possible reader of the read-only api surface (getReport, validatePath, onValidated). That surface is offered, never required, with no dependency in either direction.

Bundle roots, the no-bundle state, and the Diátaxis map (2026-09-12)

With Bundle root folders empty, bundleRoots() falls back to implicitRoots(), which calls validator.ts’s pure implicitBundleRoots. That function was renamed from the earlier autoBundleRoot, whose two-argument shape only distinguished “whole vault” from “detected knowledge_bundle/”. It decides in this order:

• a root index.md carrying a LOKF header makes the whole vault the bundle ([""]);
• otherwise a top-level knowledge_bundle/index.md makes that folder the bundle ([VISIBLE_BUNDLE_FOLDER]);
• otherwise, with the break-glass Treat the vault root as the bundle setting (treatVaultRootAsBundle, off by default) also off, it returns an empty list: no bundle at all, not the old whole-vault fallback.

hasNoBundle() is bundleRoots().length === 0. In that state nothing is scanned or warned about, the status bar reads LOKF: no bundle, and every command that would otherwise act shows one explanatory Notice (noBundleNotice()) instead. Turning the break-glass setting on reads a headerless whole vault as one bundle anyway, but never overrides a detected knowledge_bundle/ folder.

Insert the bundle’s semantic header (scaffold-root-header) targets whichever bundle the active note belongs to. In a vault with no bundle it opens a two-choice modal (ScaffoldChoiceModal, src/scaffold-modal.ts):

• make this vault the exhibition (the header goes on the root index.md);
• create a knowledge_bundle/ folder (the notes around it are left alone).

It suggests the first when the vault holds no Markdown besides index.md, and the second otherwise, and it never decides alone. The scan checks Obsidian’s live index before explaining an absent root, so a dot-folder root that a plugin such as Hidden Folders Access exposes is scanned like any other.

writeDiataxisMap now writes diataxis.md as a Document with an id and generated.by: ktl-registrar/<version> (affordances.ts’s DiataxisHeader). It upgrades a headerless map on its next refresh, because lokf validate aborts a run on a note with no frontmatter, which the earlier map triggered.

The feature-fit audit that stood here as open questions is resolved:

• the map defect is fixed;
• the librarian skill is told to leave the affordance blocks and the map alone;
• docs/using.md describes Promote body links as the hand-authoring aid it is;
• the live check replaced the dot-folder refusal;
• docs/architecture.md names the plugin’s writes for what they are.

Identity

The plugin id is ktl-registrar: in manifest.json, the community entry, and the settings folder .obsidian/plugins/ktl-registrar/. The read-only API is reached at app.plugins.plugins["ktl-registrar"].api, the device-local disable switch is stored under ktl-registrar:disabled-on-device, and the Diátaxis map is stamped generated.by: ktl-registrar/<version>. Why KTL Registrar explains the name.