If you like Obsidian, you're going to love the plugin that turns it into a project manager

As a recent Obsidian convert, I haven't yet gotten serious about using it for project management. My personal projects are in Trello, and the work-related ones are in Asana. Managing a project in Markdown always felt like a tougher workaround. Obsidian-PM changes that. It brings full project management tools, including Kanban boards, Gantt charts, task dependencies, and time tracking, directly into your vault. Everything is saved as plain Markdown. Like everything else in the open-source app, you aren't locked into proprietary paid project management software.

It gives you three ways to see your work

Switch views without switching apps

Obsidian-PM offers three views for any project: Table, Kanban, and Gantt. Table works like a sortable, filterable spreadsheet with inline editing. Kanban groups tasks by status, so you can drag cards between columns. Gantt lays out your full timeline with draggable bars, making it easy to spot scheduling gaps before they become problems.

I'm using Obsidian-PM to simulate a book project structured across four phases: Research, Writing, Editing, and Publishing. The three views each earn their place at different stages. Table during planning, Kanban once drafting starts, Gantt when coordinating with an editor over a tight delivery window.

Each view saves your filters and sorts settings as named views. My "Active Drafting" view filters out completed tasks and sorts by due date. When I need it, it opens exactly where I left off, every time. Of course, there are so many other ways to see your data with Obsidian plugins as well.

Manage all your task data in one place

See every project detail at a glance

Table view functions like a spreadsheet with a quick-add bar at the top, which is the fastest way to log multiple tasks at once. Every field is visible and editable inline: status, priority, due date, progress percentage, time estimate, and any custom fields you've defined.

For my book project, I can see all 30 tasks across four phases in a single view. Filters can help you spot bottlenecks here. For instance, filtering by Priority: Critical reveals the tasks that block everything downstream, such as "Finalize chapter order and outline," which must land before any drafting begins.

If you find yourself repeatedly checking the same filter combination, save it as a named view. I keep one called "This Week" that filters for tasks due within seven days and sorts by priority. It doubles as my daily planning to-do list in Obsidian, too.

Visualize your timeline with a Gantt chart

Watch your project schedule across time

Gantt charts are common visual tracking tools in spreadsheets. The Gantt chart in Obsidian renders your full project as a draggable timeline, with configurable granularity — day, week, month, or quarter. Dependencies show up as visual links between bars, so a scheduling knock-on effect is immediately obvious rather than something you discover too late.

When I laid out the writing phase for all six chapters, the Gantt view immediately flagged a problem: I'd compressed the self-editing tasks for Chapters four, five, and six into the same two-week window as sending the manuscript to an editor. A few drags later, the timeline was realistic.

Use monthly granularity for high-level planning and drop to weekly once you're inside a phase. Keeping the next milestones (for me, it's "First Draft Complete") visible on the chart instead of the whole project can help avoid overwhelm.

Organize tasks with a Kanban board

Go from in-progress to done

The Kanban board groups tasks into status columns — To Do, In Progress, Blocked, In Review, Done, Canceled — with drag-and-drop to instantly update status. It's the clearest way to see which chapters are moving and which ones have stalled. I don't know if you can reorder the columns, as I couldn't find the documentation that shows us how.

For my book, each chapter has three writing tasks: Outline, First Draft, and Self-Edit. Watching the first drafts move from "To Do" to "Review" feels like real progress. As soon as I see it placed in the next Kanban column, it gives me visual confirmation of my productivity.

Keep your "In Progress" column to two or three cards maximum if you are working solo. It's easy to start the next phase before the earlier ones are done. Enforcing the self-imposed limit keeps you on the job at hand. My only annoyance is

Your tasks can carry rich, specific data

Add other metrics with custom fields easily

Each task in Obsidian-PM is its own Markdown file with YAML frontmatter, supporting a full set of built-in fields, plus custom ones you define per project. Custom field types include text, number, date, select, multi-select, checkbox, URL, and person.

For my book project, I added numeric tracking fields such as Word Count Target (number), Actual Word Count (number), Draft Link (URL pointing to the relevant vault note), and Review Round, etc. For instance, Chapter 2's draft task — "Taming the Algorithm" — has a 4,500-word target, links directly to its working document, and is tagged with FSRS and spaced repetition, with an algorithm for filtering if I want to dive in.

Because everything is plain text, your data never gets locked in. Stop using Obsidian or the plugin tomorrow, and every task file will still remain fully readable.

Try mapping your next project in Obsidian now

The moment Obsidian-PM clicks is when you realize your project plan and your notes live in the same vault and link to each other freely. Installation is as easy as unzipping the plugin download into your Plugins folder. Obsidian-PM is still in its early stages. So, you won't find it via the Community plugins search box. Create a project, add five tasks with due dates, and open the Gantt view. That's all it takes to see whether it fits your work style.