Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Obsidian Bases

help.obsidian.md

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 259 posts

Re: Obsidian Bases

#91

Post by obsidianbases1 »

gavmor wrote: post #21
dadrian wrote: post #5

Are there any good LLM plugins for Obsidian, beyond just throwing Claude Code / Codex at your markdown folder?

There's no decent RAG functionality, AFAICT, but the Text-Generator plugin has been fantastic w/ larger contexts and a template that pulls either/both links and backlinks into the inference query window. Hands-down my most productive interface to LLMs for [years since GPT3.5] years running.

> There's no decent RAG functionality

Do you have any examples of what decent RAG functionality might look like? And where the current plugins fall short?

Re: Obsidian Bases

#92

Post by threecheese »

flakiness wrote: post #51

I hope Obsidian has a headless SDK running outside Obsidian that allows devs to read the vault and do various analysis and automation. With this kind of structured data there are a lot of potential use cases. The obsidian binary limitation is a roadblock there.

There’s a plugin that exposes a local api, which folks use for this type of access pattern. Obsidians sdk for plugins is not external, but it does exist and is used broadly.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#93

Post by galoisscobi »

Great idea, but the feature is poorly implemented. Cannot select multiple cells/rows. I have no idea how to extend past 20 or so rows. I regret having started transferring one of my documents to Obsidian Bases.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#94

Post by jordwest »

segphault wrote: post #83
andyferris wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... so I can't use this to render and filter a table with 10k rows without having 10k markdown files? If I understand correctly, the intention seems to be "curated list of links" which the user can sort, filter, etc when viewing. I guess that's cool, if you use Obsidian lots and have many notes/links - but when I clicked the article and saw the table I was hoping for a "dataframe" plugin for .md (much like how mer…

Yes, it relies on a Markdown note file for each row and the “columns” are YAML frontmatter and cached metadata for each file. I am with you on this, I wish Obsidian would optionally allow you to use YAML or some other structured data directly in the fenced code block or base file. I really, really want something that kind of takes an Obsidian-like approach to local databases, sort of like Excel/Airtable but with flat…

I guess there is a convergence of ideas going on here because I've actually been tinkering on something like this, a Notion-database-like that just uses flat CSV files (and internally reads it into an in-memory SQLite for filtering, grouping and displaying) then schema files for interpreting the data and displaying it nicely.

Here's a little demo of what I've got working: https://youtu.be/LCR9pAc_xn0.

It's currently still very rough and I'm just using it myself but hoping to open source it at some point.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#95

Post by AstroBen »

raviisoccupied wrote: post #34

I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.

Start with the problem you're trying to solve and use the features to solve it. Don't just try to cram its features into your life

Re: Obsidian Bases

#96

Post by muppetman »

raviisoccupied wrote: post #34

I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.

There is so much wankery around Obsidian, it's so cringleworthty. Obsidian is a nice/fancy editor for markdown files. That's all it is really. People have created so many addons to bolt so much stuff onto it, but that's all it is at its core. You can search your notes, you can tag them.

Just use the _core_ addons of Obsidian. That's all you need. Then if you find you really are missing something, have a look in the community addons. You'll probably find what you want.

But don't install Obsidian and then spend hours adding addons. You'll get overwhelmed, confused and wondering why all the Influenzers are saying it's CHANGED THEIR LIFE. It hasn't.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#97

Post by dottjt »

al_borland wrote: post #63
dottjt wrote: post #24

As much as I like the idea of Obsidian, I just can't get over all the additional functionality that Notion provides due to the integrated nature of it. In particular, I love how you select text/blocks in Notion and how every line is a "block". I really wish other editors did that as well. In fact, it's probably the main reason why I haven't moved away from Notion.

Notion always felt painfully slow and fiddly. I have convinced myself that they have manufactured their entire perceived popularity through YouTube sponsorship. It seems like there is a better tool for every job.

I agree that it's slow, but it's because of the amount of functionality it provides.

If you just want to take plain notes, then yeah. Notion isn't what you want. However if you want sprawling databases that all inter-connected, amongst a variety of different formats, then Notion is amazing for that.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#98

Post by dottjt »

shminge wrote: post #38
dottjt wrote: post #24

As much as I like the idea of Obsidian, I just can't get over all the additional functionality that Notion provides due to the integrated nature of it. In particular, I love how you select text/blocks in Notion and how every line is a "block". I really wish other editors did that as well. In fact, it's probably the main reason why I haven't moved away from Notion.

That seems such a minor gain to me. Are you not concerned about notion a) being online only and b) not letting you be in control of your data? I'm a strong proponent of File over App: who knows how long Obsidian or notion will exist - at least I know I can work with my Obsidian notes as long as text editors exist

I am concerned about those things, but what I've personally realised is that it's more important to use a tool that you really enjoy using + provides the functionality you want, as opposed to a tool you hate using and doesn't resonate with you.

I hate making notes in plain text. It's too inconvenient, not to mention doesn't provide me with the functionality I want. On the other hand, I love organising things into databases i.e. Notion.

So either I don't take notes (net negative) or I take notes (net positive).

Re: Obsidian Bases

#99

Post by dottjt »

bachmeier wrote: post #37
dottjt wrote: post #24

As much as I like the idea of Obsidian, I just can't get over all the additional functionality that Notion provides due to the integrated nature of it. In particular, I love how you select text/blocks in Notion and how every line is a "block". I really wish other editors did that as well. In fact, it's probably the main reason why I haven't moved away from Notion.

IMO they're for completely different customers. Obsidian constrains itself to working on local text files that you can sync yourself. Notion is just another complex website where you turn over all your data and they sell you AI services.

The complexity is what makes it valuable to some people. Put simply, it does more than Obsidian.

Do you need that complexity? That's a personal question.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#100

Post by cloud_watching »

muppetman wrote: post #96
raviisoccupied wrote: post #34

I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.

There is so much wankery around Obsidian, it's so cringleworthty. Obsidian is a nice/fancy editor for markdown files. That's all it is really. People have created so many addons to bolt so much stuff onto it, but that's all it is at its core. You can search your notes, you can tag them. Just use the _core_ addons of Obsidian. That's all you need. Then if you find you really are missing something, have a look in the c…

Obsidian is amazing because it is a notepad with pretty colors and the graph that gets everyone's attention. The graph is often the most overhyped and underused thing there. It looks complicated and that's the selling point of all that ecosystem around productivity systems and all that. The appearance of deep complexity and work.

I love how many just ended up here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44864134

Post reply on HN