Obsidian

Obsidian is a local-first markdown note-taking application, one of the tools that grew up alongside Roam Research (Roam Research Competition). It appears in the wiki as a tool of thought, a competitor to Roam, and the viewer for this corpus.

• An early convert’s case. In an April 2021 thread, TfTHacker describes trying Obsidian, finding it “just another Markdown editor” at first, then being won over by friends who had moved from Notion and Roam. He cites full ownership of data, optional end-to-end encrypted sync at $40 a year, a first-class mobile app, and speed from running on local hardware (1- Over a Year Ago… (tweet)).
• Roam and Obsidian together. Tools Like Roam and Obsidian… (tweet) and There Are a Number of… (tweet) place it among digital-garden tools; the latter names Obsidian Publish among commercial implementations (Digital Garden). A long-read on folders treats Roam and Obsidian as the design answer to hierarchical notes (Folders Kill Creativity (Anne-Laure Le Cunff)).
• Steph Ango. Steph Ango, CEO of Obsidian, wrote the questions collected in 40 Questions to Ask Yourself Every Year.
• Kyle’s own use. In How I Write, Kyle describes building his corpus of books, articles, companies, family history, scriptures, conversations and saved tweets into an interconnected web, and says the easiest place to store it was locally in Obsidian.

Where this appears

• 1- Over a Year Ago… (tweet)