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Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion

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Re: Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion

#41

Post by engomez »

vekker wrote: post #40

For ages I've been looking for a way to easily share & sync a simple knowledgebase (HTML/MD and other files in folders) with my team (= including non-technical people), using Git as the sync/versioning layer, without it being too technical, and without getting vendor lock-in with expensive & unnecessarily complex cloud-based platforms. Having built-in AI integration without relying on sketchy plugins would be the che…

That was our exact stated goal -- felt a lot of the same pain. Feel free to drop me any feedback here or @nickgomez on X.

Re: Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion

#42

Post by pcthrowaway »

engomez wrote: post #21
pcthrowaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I just want to see more support for local LLMs. I haven't been doing much coding lately but am interested in setting up Qwen 3.6 if I can obtain the hardware

Agree same. We'll look into explicit guides and integrations with Zed // OpenCode as a starting point, they let you choose your model.

Amazing, thanks. I've decided to try daily driving this instead of Obsidian, but I'm a bit curious how the syncing works. I copied an Obsidian vault to a new folder, and when I start the import process in OpenKnowledge it asks me if I want it "shared" or "local only". If I select "Shared", where does the git repo live that other instances of OK sync from?

edit: This seems to be "team-oriented" rather than geared towards individuals who might want to edit their notes from multiple devices?

And only seems to be able to sync with github... In addition to my privacy concerns, I'm curious if there could be issues with lots of images and other attachments since git can choke on repos that contain lots of larger files without github's git-lfs extension.

Last question I have is if any plugin system comparable to Obsidian's is planned (or already supported)? I realize this is probably a massive ask for an open-source project, and something Obsidian gets a lot of flack for as well, so I'm certainly not expecting it, but I am curious if it's on the roadmap already

Re: Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion

#44

Post by engomez »

sizero wrote: post #43

Neat, trying it out now. Are the Open Knowledge skills actually needed, if this is just markdown and folders? The skills are large, I'd prefer not filling up context.

Skills / MCPs are not hard requirement, they're tailored for the desktop agents to be able to leverage built in tools we make available for e.g. agentic search over the content and manipulating the open knowledge web viewer and editor.

Re: Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion

#45

Post by engomez »

engomez wrote: post #44
sizero wrote: post #43

Neat, trying it out now. Are the Open Knowledge skills actually needed, if this is just markdown and folders? The skills are large, I'd prefer not filling up context.

Skills / MCPs are not hard requirement, they're tailored for the desktop agents to be able to leverage built in tools we make available for e.g. agentic search over the content and manipulating the open knowledge web viewer and editor.

The skills should be pretty progressive disclosure optimized but we'll do an audit.

Re: Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion

#46

Post by abdullin »

Nice approach.

Personally I’ve been trying very hard to migrate away from git+Obsidian project setup according to the OpenAI Harness Engineering. It works wonderfully in Codex Desktop.

The only gotcha - I want to share knowledge bases with the team in a way that is:

(1) versioned (a la git, not Notion) (2) usable from any chat (a la MCP) (3) basic access controls for team setup. (4) works through the interface that optimizes accuracy and token use across agentic architectures and LLMs.

Funnily enough, 4 is the easiest one (I have a platform for agent training and verification where I publish fun challenges for agents in simulated worlds around agentic commerce and personal OSes. With 98M agentic interactions recorded, that is already enough information for tuning)

Still figuring 1 and 3, though.

Re: Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion

#47

Post by engomez »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #42
engomez wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree same. We'll look into explicit guides and integrations with Zed // OpenCode as a starting point, they let you choose your model.

Amazing, thanks. I've decided to try daily driving this instead of Obsidian, but I'm a bit curious how the syncing works. I copied an Obsidian vault to a new folder, and when I start the import process in OpenKnowledge it asks me if I want it "shared" or "local only". If I select "Shared", where does the git repo live that other instances of OK sync from? edit: This seems to be "team-oriented" rather than geared towa…

It would make a repo in your own GitHub account. You can choose whether that repo is in your personal GitHub or your GitHub org. We'll make that clearer in the UX.

Feel free to ping me any additional feedback any time (here or @nickgomez on X).

Re: Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion

#48

Post by engomez »

abdullin wrote: post #46

Nice approach. Personally I’ve been trying very hard to migrate away from git+Obsidian project setup according to the OpenAI Harness Engineering. It works wonderfully in Codex Desktop. The only gotcha - I want to share knowledge bases with the team in a way that is: (1) versioned (a la git, not Notion) (2) usable from any chat (a la MCP) (3) basic access controls for team setup. (4) works through the interface that o…

Gotcha. We're optimizing for the same scenarios, may be worth a look at our implementation in case transferable to yours. See:

#1 - the "autosync" and GitHub integrations do exactly this.

#2 - The app auto-instals skills/MCP server configs for a few harnesses

#4 - We embedded agentic-search capabilities via the MCP server (e.g. we virtualize 'ls' and 'cat' so we can enrich it for the agent for better hierchical navigation).

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