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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

#71
post #70
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nice, thanks! On my first run on Codex desktop, it said the equivalent of “skill too large, reading it in chunks”. I have the pro subscription.

Got it, investigating.

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

#73
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I just open the Obsidian folder (aka "vault") in VS Code and BOOM, it is AI friendly. I just hack on the .md files like I would code with Copilot.

But there’s no good WYSIWIG markdown editor extension for VS code.

Well there's quite a few options. The most popular I think is also open source (Markdown for Humans). Not sure what disqualifies it as "good" to you

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

#74
post #24
post #22

I don't understand how Obsidian, a collection of markdown files, isn't already AI friendly. It's hard for me to imagine a more AI-friendly but still usable way to organize your notes.

What we did to go "beyond" is build in skills and an MCP server into the app, and auto-install those into e.g. Claude, Codex, and Cursor formats. Also added a web viewer so that e.g. Claude Desktop can open up the editor directly within it's embedded web viewer.

Don't take this the wrong way, but couldn't this have been a plugin?

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

#75
post #73
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there’s no good WYSIWIG markdown editor extension for VS code.

Well there's quite a few options. The most popular I think is also open source (Markdown for Humans). Not sure what disqualifies it as "good" to you

Our bar was "Notion-grade", i.e. drag and drop blocks, slash commands, select to highlight/bold, etc.

I don't think I'd seen an extension that does that. It was a technically very hard problem, rich text editors usually use a lossy intermediary format (e.g. prosemirror).

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

#77
post #74
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we did to go "beyond" is build in skills and an MCP server into the app, and auto-install those into e.g. Claude, Codex, and Cursor formats. Also added a web viewer so that e.g. Claude Desktop can open up the editor directly within it's embedded web viewer.

Don't take this the wrong way, but couldn't this have been a plugin?

We wanted to make our own editor experience, allows us to do things like proper WYSWIG editing (Notion-like editor). MCP/AI integrations were one piece.

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

#78
post #57
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right on. We did a lot of the same and then had to deal with coaching everyone on the team how to do also set it up. Large inspiration for OpenKnowledge was providing these flows out of the box. We'll prioritize Hermes/OpenClaw guides next. Feel free to drop me any feedback as you try it out - @nickgomez on X.

What was complicated about the setup? Its a plug-ins folder... add it in and boom you are ready to go

Keeping the MCPs/skills cross-compatible across the different harnesses, and also getting non-eng folks familiar with git.

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

#79
post #62

Just my personal pref with your roadmap, don't waste time on the electron app, I would never use it. A webapp definitely with OpenCode support big on the list as well.

Ack ! re: Web app do you mean local web UI, or web hosted?

Look into Tauri, not electron
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