Troubleshooting

Where is the real error?

The preview banner already shows the first LaTeX error line (starting with !). The full story lives in the plugin folder under pipeline/build/:

File	Contents
build/<doc>/<doc>.log	Full pdflatex log. Search for the first line starting with !.
build/<doc>/build_sh.log	The whole pipeline run (pandoc + latexmk).
build/last-build.log	Docker image build log (only relevant when the image build fails).

Latexmk: Problematic refs and citations and multiply defined are warnings. Keep reading to the ! line.

Common causes

• Missing caption: on a latex-env: table or mermaid note. This is a hard error by design.
• A ```latex fence with a typo. Raw LaTeX is passed through unchecked.
• A missing package. Declare it via nope-tlmgr instead of guarding template code.
• Emoji in notes are stripped with a notice (pdflatex cannot typeset them). Greek letters and math symbols are mapped automatically.

Reproducing without Obsidian

The whole pipeline runs headless, which is useful to share a failing case:

cd <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/nope/pipeline
VAULT_PATH="/absolute/path/to/vault" docker compose run --rm pipeline "Folder/Document.md"

Errors print a >>> NOPE-ERROR: … line naming the cause. Bases embeds need the Obsidian API and stay empty in standalone runs.

Docker not found

Settings → Docker runs a preflight chain (CLI → daemon → image) and pinpoints the failing step. GUI apps do not inherit your shell PATH. If you use colima or OrbStack, set the Docker path override (the auto-detect button finds common locations).