So, IFTTT just raised prices by 33% and you know what, I’m just going to pay it and keep going. I get so much value out of the automations I have set up. I need them to make my emails to #Obsidian work. Another plus, their tech support stays with problems until they are resolved.

The new Arc Search app for iOS is better than just a chatbot on top of a search engine. It builds you a web page (with sources) to answer your search queries. The info it provides is up-to-date and easier to access than scanning a list of possible related links.

Taking Advantage of Omnivore

One of the people I follow on Micro.blog - the prolific creator @numericcitizen had a great idea recently:

I just realized that I could (and should) use Raycast AI to summarize articles saved into Omnivore and save the summary into the article notes. Then, I could finish up the metadata with appropriate tags. I used to do that within Craft before, but the Craft AI assistant uses GPT 3.5, limits the length of the input into the summarize request and doesn’t support “real tags” like in Omnivore.

The Omnivore to Obsidian Connection

Now I have a Raycast Pro subscription so I get to use the AI features and I use the Omnivore plugin for Obsidian. I recently realized that I could edit the plugin settings and have the content of the articles I save to Omnivore automatically imported into Obsidian by changing the default script in the plugin settings. The script is use is:

{{{title}}}
Omnivore  
{{{note}}}

[Read on Omnivore]({{{omnivoreUrl}}})
[Read Original]({{{originalUrl}}})

{{{content}}}

I tried a few variations becauseI wanted my notes imported too but I kept breaking things, causing the plugin to stop fetching articles so I left well enough alone.

While I was customizing things, I went ahead and set my YAML properties to a custom set too, also done in the plugin settings (advanced). This brings in my tags from Omnivore so I no longer have to tag articles in Omnivore and Obsidian. I wanted it to automatically populate the original url in the front matter, but it insists in only doing it in the body of the article. Maybe I’ll contact the developer for help with that.

title: >
{{{title}}}
{{#author}}
{{original_url}} >
{{/original_url}}
author: >
{{{author}}}
{{/author}}
{{#labels.length}}
tags:
{{#labels}} - {{{name}}}
{{/labels}}
{{/labels.length}}
date_saved: {{{dateSaved}}}
{{#datePublished}}
date_published: {{{datePublished}}}
{{/datePublished}}
id: {{{id}}}

Introducing Raycast

To get Raycast to write a summary of the web page is simple. I invoke Raycast from the keyboard and issue the AI command - which is also AI. Then I just type “summarize+ THE URL”. Almost immediately it spits out a one paragraph summary which I copy to the clipboard and paste into Obsidian as a quote. I also use the Obsidian callout function to draw attention the the quote.

[!Summary] TL;DR
Summary by ChatGPT

One Last Tip

If, like me, you use the news letter and RSS feed features in Omnivore, you can prevent those from being imported into Obsidian if you want. In the plugin settings set your Filter to Advanced and set a custom type:article and then you’ll get nothing imported but those articles you specifically save to Omnivore.

See all my Obsidian Tips