One day late… but today feels like a mini Independence Day for me.
About two months ago, Obsidian announced the launch of its Code Scanner, and the Excalidraw plugin took a hit. Its first score was a “risk” rating with a score below 50%.
Even though there was some limited communication about the change a few weeks ahead of time, I completely missed it because all my focus was on launching the Sketch Your Mind Community. The hit came from left field. I was caught off guard and was extremely disappointed that no one reached out to me directly ahead of time.
This setback really stung because it took away focus and momentum from what I had planned to work on, and forced me to shift attention to something that was on someone else’s agenda. I’m not the type of person who shrugs and moves on when a project I’ve spent five years building takes what feels like an unfair hit.
Watch my reflections from that time here: The Truth About Obsidian Plugins
Fast forward to today, and I’m proud to say Excalidraw 2.25.2 just hit a full score.
After 35 releases (including beta releases), thousands of small fixes, and countless hours of work, Excalidraw is back at the top.
That said, I’m still reflecting on this journey.
I absolutely see the value in pushing for higher code quality standards. They improve safety, maintainability, and trust in the plugin ecosystem. I experienced the benefits firsthand when I released the Excalidraw Extras plugin a few weeks ago. The new publishing process was smooth and incredibly fast. Hats off to the Obsidian team for that.
I still think the code scanner rollout was unnecessarily difficult, especially for existing plugins. As a solo hobby developer, these changes consumed an enormous amount of time—time I simply couldn’t afford while in parallel I was trying to launch Sketch Your Mind. Over the past two months I averaged roughly one release every two days, constantly chasing findings and fixing issues.
To be fair, the Code Scanner also helped me uncover a number of genuine bugs and code quality issues that deserved fixing. I’m grateful for that.
At the same time, anyone who has worked on software knows that rapid, large-scale refactoring is one of the easiest ways to introduce new hidden bugs. Every time you touch working code, you take a risk. While I certainly eliminated many problems, I’m equally certain I introduced some new ones along the way.
Now that my focus can finally shift back to actually using Excalidraw—taking visual notes, illustrating ideas, and creating content—I’m sure I’ll discover some of those bugs naturally. So don’t be surprised if you still see bug-fix releases over the coming months.
Today’s perfect score doesn’t mean the work is over, either. The Obsidian code quality tools still report hundreds of findings that currently don’t contribute to the score. As the rules evolve, some of those will likely become part of future scoring. That’s one of the challenges of aiming at a moving target.
For today, though, I’m simply choosing to celebrate.
I also want to say a heartfelt THANK YOU. The number of encouraging comments over the past two months has been incredible. Many of you also chose to support the project financially, which genuinely means a lot. Knowing that people value the work makes those late evenings and weekends much easier.
My plan now is simple: I’d like to stay away from releasing Excalidraw updates for the rest of July, take a proper holiday, spend time reading, drawing, experimenting, and investing in the Sketch Your Mind Community. If all goes well, I’ll be back in August—or perhaps September—with some exciting new features.
If you’ve enjoyed Excalidraw or found my work helpful over the years, here’s how you can become part of this journey and help me keep building.
Want to understand the ideas behind Visual PKM?
Read Sketch Your Mind, my book on visual thinking and personal knowledge management.
https://community.sketch-your-mind.com/sym
Just getting started?
Take the free Excalidraw Essentials course and learn the fundamentals.
https://community.sketch-your-mind.com/ee
Ready to go deeper?
Join the Sketch Your Mind Community, where we explore visual thinking, PKM, and creative workflows together.
Learn about the community:
https://community.sketch-your-mind.com/welcome
Become a member:
https://community.sketch-your-mind.com/join
Want the complete experience?
The Visual Thinking Workshop is my flagship course on Visual PKM. It includes a Demo Obsidian vault, 12.5 hours of video lessons, quizzes, podcast chapter summaries, and much more. As a bonus, you’ll also receive one year of Sketch Your Mind Community membership.
https://community.sketch-your-mind.com/vtw
Want to support future development?
A Ko-fi membership helps me dedicate more time to Excalidraw, create educational content, and build new ideas.
https://ko-fi.com/zsolt
Every reader, every course participant, every community member, every Ko-fi supporter, and every encouraging comment helps make this project sustainable.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
Happy sketching!
— Zsolt
