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Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#91

Post by kepano »

Obsidian is crazy good for how new it is. And the team is moving extremely fast. It seems like they really know what they want out of this product.

I've tried dozens of knowledge management tools and settled on TiddlyWiki a couple years ago. It took a lot of customization to get anywhere close as useable as Obsidian is out of the box.

Here's what I love about Obsidian:

- Local files, syncs via iCloud/Dropbox/etc makes it future proof

- Markdown with [[ ]]] bidirectional links and - [ ] checklists.

- Automatically updates all old links if you rename a file(!)

- Compatible with 1Writer on iOS

- Really nice keyboard shortcuts

- Runs as its own app (in a wrapper), but can be styled via custom CSS

- Automatically parses external URLs (don't necessarily need to use the markdown format for simple .com URLs)

- Great editing experience, e.g. auto indenting bullets

- Autocomplete for everything (tags, linked pages)

- Lots of extra nice touches like graph view and the pane system to open multiple files at once

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#92

Post by ryantuck »

This is sweet. I've been building and working in a markdown-based zettelkasten locally for a while, and this does provide the added killer benefits of the graph visualizer and pretty-preview functionality that I'm currently missing in the terminal. Nice job, looking forward to playing around with it!

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#93

Post by programmarchy »

atfzl wrote: post #48
programmarchy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the links between node could be directed and annotated, then it'd become much more powerful, though. Similar to how TheBrain works [1] I see that the public plugin interface is a long term goal at this point [2] but it'd be amazing if plugins could expose ways to mark up graph relationships! [1] https://www.thebrain.com [2] https://trello.com/c/Z7qqKVXd/19-public-plugin-interface-v10

Still not sure if having a mind map would make it more usable. Do you feel having mind map like this would help you ?

Well, I don't really mean mind map; I don't think those are very useful at least not in the traditional sense.

But yes, I think directed graphs would help me. Take the use case of modeling social relationships: each node is a person or company with a short bio, links can include "funded-by", "worked-with". Suddenly you have a tool that you can use to traverse professional relationships to find a connection to an investor funding a certain type of company. You can sort of do this with LinkedIn and Crunchbase, and it's possible with TheBrain although its UX is very tedious.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#94

Post by dvtrn »

ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

2. Link as first-citizen.

sits up in chair, attention captured

Where can I read more about this? My current personal wiki is powered by TiddlyWiki and while I don't necessarily love the performance, I do LOVE the link structure of TiddlyWiki (I can create a "table of contents" page a random tag, and then every page using that tag gets rendered on said page). I have similar plugins for VSCode to collect all of my todo comments all into one document, linking back to their respective files.

Curious if Obsidian has a similar feature beyond the mind-map view shown on the features page?

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#95

Post by rrherr »

kilroy123 wrote: post #66
rrherr wrote: post #52

What I'm looking for: 1st priority: macOS & iOS apps that always sync, open FAST, and look clean, to enter new notes with no friction. Like Bear (which I currently use) and Simplenote (which I used to use). 2nd priority: Bi-directional links. Like Roam and Obsidian. Transclusion. Like Roam (and Obsidian?) I'm willing to pay up to $15/month. Like Roam. Are there any solutions that give all of the above?

I 100% agree. I've been tempted to migrate from Typora + Joplin to bear app. Do you think it's worth it?

I love Bear! Here are the only drawbacks I see:

- Only available for macOS & iOS.

- Not free if you need sync. But it's only $1.49/month! I'd rather pay for a tool because then it's more likely to last.

- Has [[one-way links]] but not two-way, so I feel some FOMO when I see people getting so excited about Roam Research.

If you migrate: Go to Preferences and turn on Markdown compatibility mode. Then use Import Notes to read all your files from Typora & Joplin.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#96

Post by benrbray »

elric wrote: post #69
benrbray wrote: post #47

This looks great! Good timing too, since Roam has recently closed its doors to new signups. I've been looking for a new notetaking / PKM / Markdown app recently, but unfortunately all apps out there fall short in at least one of the following criteria: * bidirectional [[wiki links]] * support for both inline and display math * customizable themes / CSS * rich formatting beyond markdown (e.g. wrap content in tags with…

Have you looked into Zettlr(.com)? It ticks most of your boxes. Plain old markdown. And it's actually open source and a pretty decent community, so there's a good chance to get features in.

Looks very promising, thanks! I'm surprised I've never come across Zettlr before in all my research about editors. The features page and docs really are a testament to potential of OSS.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#97

Post by ymolodtsov »

DC-3 wrote: post #37
cxr wrote: post #14

It looks like this isn't open source. If this is supposed to be one's second brain, please at least consider using a time-bomb FOSS license. Something like: you're permitted to use Obsidian under Apache/MIT/GPL license either 7 years after a given release, or effective immediately in the event that Obsidian shuts down.

Thanks for raising this. I couldn't imagine using anything like this without a serious guarantee that if development ever bogs down I'd still have some way to keep it working and up-to-date. Even if the founders honestly intend this to be the case, who is to say that the firm that buys them up feels similarly?

The data vault is in the publicly accessible format which is pretty good protection as well.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#98

Post by alexktz »

imglorp wrote: post #74
benrbray wrote: post #47

This looks great! Good timing too, since Roam has recently closed its doors to new signups. I've been looking for a new notetaking / PKM / Markdown app recently, but unfortunately all apps out there fall short in at least one of the following criteria: * bidirectional [[wiki links]] * support for both inline and display math * customizable themes / CSS * rich formatting beyond markdown (e.g. wrap content in tags with…

Since roam was lamented, obligatory boost for org-roam: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam

Apart from the learning curve org-roam is the answer.

I’m on week 2 with it and I can hardly sleep I’m so excited by how it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#99

Post by aroberge »

rrherr wrote: post #52

What I'm looking for: 1st priority: macOS & iOS apps that always sync, open FAST, and look clean, to enter new notes with no friction. Like Bear (which I currently use) and Simplenote (which I used to use). 2nd priority: Bi-directional links. Like Roam and Obsidian. Transclusion. Like Roam (and Obsidian?) I'm willing to pay up to $15/month. Like Roam. Are there any solutions that give all of the above?

I just joined the beta last week. I keep my notes as md files in a private github repo. I just "loaded" the folder in obsidian and it just worked. I imagine that any editor that you can use with your own storage place would work.

Edit: Someone else mentioned " ... editing to add that I'm using iCloud for my vaults which allows for very fast syncing and the ability to edit on iOS".

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#100

Post by ymolodtsov »

dvtrn wrote: post #94
ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

2. Link as first-citizen. sits up in chair, attention captured Where can I read more about this? My current personal wiki is powered by TiddlyWiki and while I don't necessarily love the performance, I do LOVE the link structure of TiddlyWiki (I can create a "table of contents" page a random tag, and then every page using that tag gets rendered on said page). I have similar plugins for VSCode to collect all of my todo…

If I got you right, then you can just open the said tag in Obsidian and see all references to it as backlinks on the side panel.
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