I get the obsidian question all the time! The differences are:

- better note organization with types and relationships - different, more Notion-like UX - first class support for git as sync + version control layer - long tail of design decisions that help AI work well with vaults: types, MCP, git authorship, etc - and most of all... open source!

Obsidian and these newer tools share markdown + local files, but they're aimed at different assumptions about who reads and edits the vault. Obsidian's default is "human reads and curates; plugins optionally enhance." The AI-first cohort (Tolaria, Sig in the sibling comment, and several others) assumes the AI reads and writes as a first-class agent, which makes design choices like how the app reacts to files changing underneath it (cf. the Zettlr comment downthread) a core concern rather than an edge case.

Worth watching how each of these tools positions the AI: as a UX copilot inside the editor, or as an autonomous agent with file-system access via local CLI/MCP.

>open-source

Yes, but the claim is presumably that this one is good.

Exactly - cooperation is not incentivized properly