Background Tasks

Long-running operations — deep research and image generation — run in the background so they never block your editing session. Results are saved to your vault automatically and you're notified when they're ready.

Status Bar Indicator

The status bar shows a single indicator for all background work. It reflects both active background tasks and the RAG indexing state in one place.

Appearance	Meaning
Hidden	No background work running, RAG idle or disabled
Spinning loader icon + count	One or more background tasks running
Upload-cloud icon + percentage	RAG indexing in progress
Pause-circle icon	RAG indexing paused

Click the indicator at any time to open the Background Tasks panel.

Background Tasks Panel

The panel (also available via Command Palette → View Background Tasks) shows:

• Running — tasks currently in progress, with a Cancel button for each
• Recent — the last 20 completed, failed, or cancelled tasks

Completed tasks with output files show an Open result link that opens the file in Obsidian.

How Tasks Are Created

Background tasks are created automatically when you trigger long-running operations:

• Deep Research — starts a research task; result saved to [state-folder]/Background-Tasks/YYYY-MM-DD <topic>.md by default (you can specify a custom path via the outputFile parameter)
• Image Generation — generates and saves an image; result path shown in the completion notice. The Generate Image command palette entry also routes through the background system: it returns control immediately and inserts the wikilink at your captured cursor position when the task completes (or shows a Notice with the wikilink to copy if you've moved on from the source note).

Both operations fire a completion notice with a clickable vault link when done. If a task fails, a notice explains the error.

Cancellation

Click Cancel next to a running task in the panel. The task stops at the next safe checkpoint — it may not stop instantly if the underlying API call is already in flight.

Accessing Results

When a task completes you'll see a notice in the bottom-right corner with an Open result link. You can also find the result by:

1. Clicking the status bar indicator → Open result in the Recent section
2. Navigating directly to [state-folder]/Background-Tasks/ in the file explorer (unless you set a custom outputFile path)

Troubleshooting

Task shows as failed Check the error shown in the Background Tasks panel. Common causes:

• API key not configured or expired
• Network timeout on long-running research queries
• Vault path conflict for image output

Status bar indicator not visible The indicator is hidden when there is nothing to show (no tasks running, RAG disabled or idle). Trigger a background task or enable RAG indexing in Settings.