FAQ

What is Pensum?

A productivity layer for Obsidian. Tasks, projects, meetings (record + transcribe + summarize + extract tasks), a wiki/curation loop, calendar views, and AI features — all built around the principle that your vault is the source of truth and your AI agents can participate in your workflow rather than just observe it.

One plugin runs on both desktop and mobile from the same code. A CLI and an MCP server share the same engine for terminal and agent workflows.

Is Pensum free?

The core is free forever: tasks, projects, wiki, all views, capture surfaces, cleanup. Pro adds meeting recording + AI features + MCP server + CLI. Two Pro tiers:

Plan	Cost	What you get
Free	$0	Local productivity, no AI, no meetings
Pro BYO	$9/mo or $89/yr	Adds Pro features; you bring API keys for Anthropic / OpenAI / Gemini / Deepgram
Pro All-in-One	$29/mo or $279/yr	Same as Pro BYO + Pensum-managed AI (no keys to manage) + 40 hours managed transcription

14-day Pro trial, no credit card. See plans and licensing.

What does Pensum do that the Tasks plugin doesn’t?

Tasks is great at the task layer — parsing, querying, recurring tasks, the syntax that Pensum builds on. Pensum is the layer above:

• Built-in views (Today, Inbox, Forecast, Calendar, By Project, etc.) without writing queries
• Project Pages that auto-open when you view a project file
• Meeting workflow — record, transcribe, summarize, extract tasks
• Wiki capture and curation — Cmd+Shift+W to drop a stub, the Curate view to develop it
• AI integration — Smart Capture, Smart Triage, AI activity log
• Agent access — MCP server, CLI built for both humans and agents
• Templates with prompts — built-in for projects, meetings, wiki stubs; user-extensible

Tasks-format syntax is fully respected — Pensum reads any - [ ] task and writes them the same way. You can use Pensum alongside Tasks if you want, though most Pensum features overlap with Tasks features.

What does Pensum do that Dataview doesn’t?

Dataview is a query engine. Pensum is a workflow. Different tools.

If you’ve built a custom Today / Inbox / Forecast setup with Dataview queries, Pensum gives you the same views as built-in, polished, sortable, drag-rescheduleable surfaces — without writing queries. If you want to write arbitrary queries beyond the built-in views, Dataview is more powerful than Pensum’s Filters view.

You can use both. Pensum doesn’t conflict with Dataview.

What about Obsidian Sync? iCloud? Syncthing?

Pensum is sync-agnostic. Your vault is markdown files; whatever syncs them is fine. We’ve tested with Obsidian Sync, iCloud, Syncthing, Dropbox, and git. Nothing about Pensum is sync-specific.

The internal index file (.pensum/index.json) syncs along with the rest of your vault. If you’d rather not sync it (it’s regenerable), you can exclude it from your sync — Pensum regenerates it on first run after install on each device.

Does Pensum work on mobile?

Yes. The same plugin runs in Obsidian Mobile (iOS and Android) from the same vault. Most features work identically. Limitations:

• Transcription is deferred to desktop by default — record on mobile, transcribe when you’re back at a desktop with Pro
• Background recording is limited by iOS / Android — keep Obsidian foregrounded
• Native widgets, share extensions, Siri / Assistant integrations aren’t available — Obsidian plugins can’t access them. A future native standalone app might add these; v1.0 doesn’t.

Is my vault data sent anywhere?

No, with the exception of features that explicitly require it. Your vault content stays local to your device.

What leaves your device:

• License validation — your license key and a random device ID, sent to our server every ~7 days
• AI features (BYO) — the prompt or transcript goes directly to your chosen provider (Anthropic / OpenAI / Gemini / Deepgram) using your API key
• AI features (managed, Pro All-in-One) — the prompt or transcript goes to Pensum’s API proxy, which forwards to the provider and discards the content after the response. No vault content is stored on our servers.
• Meeting transcription — same as AI features above, depending on plan
• Trial activation — your email + device ID, to issue your trial license

No telemetry, no analytics, no phone-home on plugin load, no usage data collection. For the full data-flow picture, see architecture and the privacy policy.

Are my API keys secure?

Keys are stored in Obsidian’s OS-backed keychain via the SecretStorage API (introduced in Obsidian 1.11.4). Pensum’s plugin settings only hold the secret’s name, not its value. The key value never sits in plugin storage.

Keys are sent only to the corresponding provider (in BYO mode). In managed mode, the plugin authenticates to Pensum’s proxy using a short-lived signed license token — your API keys aren’t involved at all because Pensum’s proxy uses its own keys with the providers.

Can I use Pensum without AI features?

Yes. The free tier has no AI features at all — tasks, projects, wiki, views, cleanup, all local. Pro BYO with no provider keys configured works the same way (the AI buttons just won’t have a backing provider).

If you want AI for one feature but not others, use per-feature model dropdowns in Settings → AI: leave the model blank for any feature you want disabled.

Can I use local AI models (Ollama, LM Studio)?

For text features (Smart Capture, Smart Triage, Summarization, etc.) — not currently. The catalog only includes cloud providers. Local-model support is a likely post-launch addition.

For transcription — not in v1.0. Local Whisper (whisper.cpp, MLX-Whisper) is on the post-launch roadmap.

Can agents modify my vault without my approval?

You have three layers of control:

1. Agent Captures review queue (default on). New tasks from agents land in the queue with agent-suggested-pending provenance — they don’t appear in Today / Inbox / By Project until you accept. Toggle under Settings → Agents → Agent capture review.
2. Read-only mode. Run the MCP server with PENSUM_MCP_MODE=read-only (or use pensum mcp install --read-only) and every write tool refuses cleanly with a READ_ONLY error. Reads still work. Useful for context-building sessions you don’t want to accidentally have side effects.
3. .pensumignore. A gitignore-style file at the vault root that fences off paths the MCP server may never touch. Defaults already exclude .pensum/secrets/**, .git/**, and Obsidian’s workspace state. Add anything else you want kept off-limits.

In allow mode without .pensumignore rules, agents can read anything, write/edit/delete tasks and files, and patch project frontmatter. Every write call is recorded to .pensum/mcp-audit.jsonl, so you can audit after the fact via system.audit or tail -f from a terminal.

See MCP server for the full picture.

What’s the “Get more from your day” banner on the Today view?

It’s a one-time migration nudge that shows up when:

• Your vault has at least five tasks total, AND
• More than zero of them live outside your configured Inbox files

It’s there to point you at the Inbox triage flow — the most common “I’m not getting value from this” pattern with task plugins is leaving tasks scattered across notes and never processing them. The banner dismisses for good on click (and there’s a “Don’t show again” option). It’s not asking you to migrate anything; it’s just a reassurance that there’s a workflow for the tasks you already have.

How do I subscribe to my Pensum tasks from Apple Calendar / Google Calendar?

Run Pensum: Export tasks to ICS in the command palette. Pensum writes Pensum/Exports/tasks.ics inside your vault. Open the file in Finder and Apple Calendar subscribes to it. For Google Calendar you need to expose the file at an HTTPS URL — see Calendar Export for the details.

The export is one-way (read-only on the calendar’s side) and refreshes when you re-run the command. There’s no live sync — by design, since calendar tasks are flat and changing them in the calendar wouldn’t round-trip cleanly anyway.

What happens if I uninstall Pensum?

Your vault is unchanged. Every task, project, meeting, and wiki entry is just markdown — Obsidian (and any other markdown reader) keeps working with them. The internal index file (.pensum/index.json) becomes meaningless and can be deleted.

If you uninstall and reinstall later, Pensum picks up where you left off — first run scans your vault and rebuilds the index.

If you uninstall and switch to a different tool (Tasks, Things, OmniFocus, etc.), the Tasks-format syntax in your files works with most of them. Custom Pensum frontmatter fields (provenance, ai_summary_status, etc.) are just YAML — other tools ignore them silently.

How does Pensum compare to Notion / Linear / Asana?

Different category. Notion, Linear, Asana are hosted SaaS — your data lives on their servers, you access it through their app or web UI. Pensum lives in your Obsidian vault — your data is plain markdown on your disk, you access it through Obsidian.

The advantages of the Pensum model: portability, local-first, offline-first, sync-agnostic, no vendor lock-in. The trade-off: less polished collaboration features (Obsidian’s strength is single-user; multi-user collaboration is via shared vaults, which works but is rougher than purpose-built collab tools).

If you’re already in Obsidian, Pensum is the natural fit. If you’re choosing between Obsidian + Pensum vs. Notion / Linear / Asana, the question is broader than just Pensum.

I’m coming from Todoist / Things / TickTick. Can I import?

Not currently — there’s no migration tool. The right pattern is:

1. Export your tasks from the old tool to CSV or markdown
2. Convert to Pensum’s task format (- [ ] with 🔺 priority, 📅 date, etc.) using a script or by hand
3. Drop the file in your vault under Tasks/Imported.md or similar

For a few hundred tasks this is feasible by hand or with a quick script. For thousands, an import tool might be worth requesting.

How does support work?

Email support@pensum.dev. Response target: 48-72 hours at launch, tightening as the user base grows.

For plugin bugs (UI broken, error you can reproduce), GitHub issues at github.com/craigmccaskill/pensum/issues — include OS / Obsidian version / Pensum version / repro steps.

Who builds Pensum?

Craig McCaskill. Senior PM at ServiceNow on the AI platform side, building Pensum as an independent side project. Pensum is self-funded.

Where’s the source?

Plugin and CLI source: github.com/craigmccaskill/pensum. MIT licensed. The license server source is in the same repo under apps/license-server/.

Paid features (meetings, AI, MCP, CLI) gate by a license check at runtime, but the source is fully visible and forkable. This is open-core monetization — see the project’s business plan if you want the philosophy.