Assignee & Role Tracking for your Obsidian Tasks.
Assign tasks to people or companies. Designate DACI-style roles (“Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed”), or roll out your own and track them all in a powerful Task Center.
I often find myself creating sub-tasks like: Update legal weekly, or Inform Jane about supplier delays, and wishing I could add this context to the main task instead. Tags become messy quickly; they're too unstructured for me.
So I've built Task Roles, an Obsidian plugin, to provide a quick shorthand for adding and tracking who’s involved and how, directly within tasks.
If you find this helpful or have ideas to improve it, I'd love to hear from you!
- One-click role assignment – a tiny 👤 icon appears at the end of every task line; click to pick people/companies and their role.
- Custom roles & icons – Choose some or all of the flexible default roles, or roll out your own (e.g.
Reviewer 🔍). - Inline shortcuts – type
\o,\a,\c, or\ito drop in Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed fields without leaving the keyboard. In single Assignee mode, \a works for Assignee. - @People & +Companies autocompletion – link tasks to people (
@Jane) or companies (+AcmeCorp) pulled from folders you specify. - Task Center dashboard – filter by status, role, person, due date and more in real time.
A tasklist with roles assigned, and the optional 'Quick access icon' added to the end of each task line
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Install the plugin: See installation instructions below
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Create a task:
- [ ] Ship Q3 roadmap
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Start typing – the 👤 icon pops in. Click it, set yourself as Driver, your PM as Approver, and watch the inline roles appear:
- [ ] Ship Q3 roadmap [👤:: @me] [👍:: @PM]
Done! Every future task is just as easy.
BRAT install: Until this plugin is published to the Obsidian community, you can install it by using the BRAT plugin.
- Install the BRAT plugin if you haven't already.
- Open the BRAT settings and add the following URL to the "Beta Plugin List", and click "Add Beta Plugin"
https://github.com/lc0rp/obsidian-task-roles
Manual install: Download from the releases page, unzip to
<your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-task-roles/, then reload Obsidian.
Open via Cmd/Ctrl‑P → “Open Task Center”, the ribbon icon, or your own hotkey.
Switch between four views:
| View | Ideal for |
|---|---|
| Status | Kanban‑style progress (To Do, In Progress, Done, Cancelled) |
| Role | See who’s blocking what |
| Assignees | Everything one person or company is attached to |
| Date | Overdue, Today, This Week, Next Week |
Filters (multi‑select, live‑update) let you combine role + person + status + tag + date for laser‑focused lists.
Settings highlights
- Person/Company prefix – swap
@or+for anything else. - Role manager – hide defaults, change order, or add custom roles + emoji/icon.
- Compact filters – turn the Task Center header into a single‑row toolbar.
Full settings reference lives in the in‑app Settings → Task Roles tab.
| Tool | Works with |
|---|---|
| Obsidian Tasks | Role shortcuts fall back to \ triggers when Tasks’ own suggestions are active. |
| Dataview | Inline roles are stored as Dataview properties ([👤:: @Alice]), so you can query them. |
| Symbol Linking | Align the symbols used for @people & +companies. |
- KeepSidian - Intelligently sync Google Keep notes to Obsidian.
- Checkbox Bulk Dates - Add creation dates to unchecked checkboxes.
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Does this change my markdown?
Only by appending Dataview‑style inline fields ([👤:: @Alice]). Remove them and the file is plain markdown again. -
What if I rename a person?
Use Obsidian’s file‑rename; links update automatically. -
Can I disable the 👤 icon?
Yes – Settings → Task Roles → Inline widget → Disable.
More questions? Open a Discussion.
git clone https://github.com/lc0rp/obsidian-task-roles.git
cd obsidian-task-roles
npm i
npm run dev # hot‑reloads into your test vaultPRs and issue reports are welcome!
Built with ❤ on top of the Obsidian API and inspired by team‑task frameworks like DACI and RACI.
Also:
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Task Notes: Inspired the inline widget. I'd like to add Task Notes compatibility soon.
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Symbol Linking: Inspired the @person and +company symbols.