alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian
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Very nice. Coincidentally I was doing the same. I tried multiple alternatives to Obsidian and they where all not it. I also wrote my own but opted for a website version that I host on a PINE64. Also written in Go; it's my first ever product written in Go.
AI'm building a native version[0] of Obsidian in Qt6 (QWidgets, cpp), replicating the markdown editor takes a while, there are so many ways of corrupting the file or losing the rendered markdown style... but its getting there[1] and its lightweight, using about 15mb ram, no gpu and barely uses any cpu when the cursor or scroll moves, like a text editor should be.
Still need to render widget tables, lists and syntax highlighting for code blocks for a basic modern notepad, i'm not sure about open sourcing it, seems like a waste of time nowadays but it'll be free to use.
[0]: https://i.imgur.com/ro9Zq9w.png [1]: https://i.imgur.com/pbJcTQF.gif
I wouldn't show it as an alternative to Obsidian though. It shares MD files with it and both are supposedly about note taking ("supposedly" is for Obsidian, I haven't tried Files.md yet), but Files.md seems to have its own way of making the users work with their thoughts, notes and knowledge altogether.
When I read "an alternative", I assumed feature-parity and API compatibility. But what I found out was entirely different and much more interesting.
I'll give it a try, thanks for sharing your year-old work!
Joplin is open source, syncing setup between devices is one login to Dropbox, works for free, with native apps on Windows/OSX/Linux/iOS/Android. It has a bunch of plugins too. If you just need markdown files with syncing, use it rather than paying for Obsidian sync.
The 2GB free quota on Dropbox is plenty enough for text (and some screenshots). Or you could self-host obviously. Git while lovely for source code is a hassle for notes.
It’s interesting to me that it says that in some versions of second brain:
“Second brain grows, but first brain doesn’t get smarter.”
Something I remember Tiago Forte said, which turned me off of his partículas brand of a second brain, is that his goal is to “remember nothing”, and have the second brain surface exactly the context necessary at the moment, which he would proceed to read and ingest.
That sounds terrible to me :) it’s like “we don’t need to remember things if we can google them”.
I much prefer this author’s vision of using the second brain to strengthen the first brain.
I believe that not only you should own your data in plain files, but also you should own the software that opens those files.
So that your files and tools can grow together, fully under your ownership, through the ages.
The app can be easily tweaked for your own needs via an LLM - code is optimized for that.
P.S. And Golang seems to be great fit for this kind of software.
I use .MD files, helix terminal editor with a markdown LSP called markdown-oxide that replicates the obsidian feature set (like bidirectional links, tags, making new notes automatically, two keys get you from a in-line footnote to the definition and back again, etc), and rumdl which is a super efficient and customizable markdown linter and formatter (semantic line breaks far the win!) . Since it is all helix I can jump around a huge web of interlinked files very quickly with only a few key presses, as well as inside a document and manipulate them en masse or in minute detail all with only a few taps. All of your standard open source terminal tools work with it, difftastic, bat/cat, zoxide/CD, ripgrep, fzf, git, LLMs, encryption, sync, etc etc. I use yazi for a visual filepicker and zellij for tabs. Run it on a server and connect from any computer in the world without downloading a single thing. I sometimes make use of two tools called rucola and tree-md for looking at prettier versions of the texts and seeing stats about how they interact. All open source of course!
There is no better interface for text than a terminal, and we are in the golden age. Despite being extremely powerful, this setup will run on resource constrained machines.
One thing I still miss in most markdown tools is good rendering/sharing of large architecture docs and Mermaid diagrams. I ended up building my own markdown file reader - https://mdview.io which handles large diagrams/tables much better than typical note apps
Heh, the author admitted that he got tired of what I'll call "curating metadata" in Obsidian, so wrote an app that handled more of it automatically.
My take: you probably don't need so much metadata!
I've spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to figure out the perfect knowledge management app for me and honestly, I'm pretty sure I will get a lot of mileage out of something you just throw pages into, search to find it again, and ask AI to summarize/consolidate when you need it again.
This is neat, but I need a non-server-side program for this. I want everything local and running for the next 20+ years.
Or just use LogSeq https://discuss.logseq.com/t/whats-new-with-logseq-db-may-16...
I too built something similar but as an API Client - https://voiden.md/ - Obsidian really picking up !
To edit Markdown files I want a nice simple native app.
We had those already more than a decade ago. Personally, I fondly remember Mou.
Obsidian has heavy Electron vibes, and Files.md is several steps more into the wrong direction.
The name is also bad. It feels like it was chosen because someone already had the domain.
QOwnNotes is a similar project in this domain.
(Note: The NextCloud integration is entirely optional, I've never used it. The front page makes it sound like a requirement.)
Nice project. People may also want to checkout Tiddlywiki.
Obsidian may not be open source, but its file format is definitely more open than Joplin's. Which is why I switched to it.
Synchronizing with Syncthing works well enough both on desktops and smartphones.
Same idea, but directly inside your terminal: https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf
The plugin ecosystem is what really makes Obsidian different from the rest.
While OSS is nice, in theory it allows vibe-coding personalizations, without a clear plugin standard then every update would cause a merge headache.
And there is no lack of text editors.
The first real Obsidian alternative would allow use of existing Obsidian plugins. And I think this one thing could really make an alternative gain traction, with both users and those who contribute to the plugin ecosystem.
Looks really slick! I've been using Obsidian with git, and am thinking of moving back to the OG solution of simply using a text editor with a git repo. I'm wary of using cloud like google drive or dropbox for sync, especially if I'm using both phone and mobile to edit the same file throughout the day. I doubt using an external cloud really takes care of consistency and there's a possibility of losing data. Me being a developer can take the pain of a button click to git pull and resolve occasional conflicts. To me this is fully solved solution for note taking with tools I already know and trust. Having said that, I'm gonna try Files.md for some inspiration on what I could be missing.
Interesting. I recently "vibe-coded" my personal Obsidian clone, because I want proper Emacs keybindings, and Obsidian does not support those, not even through extensions.
I do not know what to do with my pet project. I'm using it myself, and it has tons of futures that took quite some effort to get right. For example, WYSIWYG table editing is not trivial, and Claude Opus agrees with me, in the sense that it could not manage it (at all) by itself.
Open-sourcing it is an option, but I don't look forward to negative feedback. If anyone else wants Emacs keybindings in Obsidian, I will change my mind :)
There's also https://logseq.com/
Is there a way to follow inline links from a mobile device? Doesn’t seem to work for me in mobile Safari.
self-hosted sync - is only local networked devices syncs all over internet?
This looks awesome, and I've been waffling about moving from Notion to something local/markdown based for a while. My only issue is that I really like using "databases"/tables, specifically for moving through processes ticket-style, in Notion. Does anyone know if there's something similar elsewhere? I'm not familiar with the knowledge-base/wiki space, I just kinda fell into notion.
Thank you for actually acquiring the .md domain corresponding to your software and avoiding some security holesof the future :)
I’ll use obsidian until I can one shot its replacement with a local llm coding agent. And if it goes away tomorrow AND a solar flare wipes my install but somehow leaves everything else, I’ll use helix and ranger until I can one shot its replacement,… with a local llm coding agent.
Shameless plug of a similar project (of mine), feature rich, static publishing, version control, local first, no backend required, free, open and no sign ups:
What is this providing over similarly Markdown based open source note taking applications like Joplin? (https://joplinapp.org/)
I've been a huge fan of the fact that my backend sync infrastructure is my own self-hosted S3 bucket with local clients handling the presentation layer.
I'm missing export in https://textbundle.org/ format.
"TextBundle brings convenience back - by bundling the Markdown text and all referenced images into a single file."
I like the blurb about your ZK being something which can actually hold you back. I encounted the same issue myself and found that ZK is not always the best fit for me.
I find the best thing to do when studying something is to go over your material, internalize and synthesize it in an essay. If you can't create an original essay which perfectly replicates the knowledge you want to understand then you almost certainly don't understand it perfectly.
Alternatively, create a detailed flow chart using subcharts if you have to. (Graphviz/dot is good for this)
The '... building this for 5 years' definitely resonates. Text editors are a pitfall of hidden complexities!
It looks and feels great, congratulations for getting this out.
I've also tried something similar: https://xezpeleta.github.io/Idaztian/
Definitely not easy to replicate Obsidian UX.
The chat interface is an interesting take. With AI assistants in full swing, it now looks viable.
The few mentions of plugins lead me to believe that Files.md won't have them, and this:
>Do we really need this feature? Will it help us to do the real job, or does it just give dopamine?
Makes me think that requests for features generally will be turned down. So, No, thank you. Sometimes less is less.
I wonder if markdown will slowly fall out of favor for note taking, because AI can generate gorgeous-looking HTML essentially for free.
I saw this bit of advice on twitter last week -- to use HTML as the target output for your LLM when you do planning or discussion sessions. And it's been very nice. It's so much easier to parse lots of info when it's presented in an organized/color-coordinated HTML file (potentially with some limited interactivity, and SVG drawings), rather than a block of markdown.
I now wonder if I should give my personal notes the same treatment. The only disadvantage HTML has relative to markdown is that HTML is harder to write and style. But you now have LLMs for that. And HTML/CSS/JS lets you customize your notes in whatever way you want. If you use HTML, any browser becomes your "note-viewing" app, and HTML is just as easy to store and move around as markdown, because it's just plain text.
I don’t understand these apps. Zed and VSCode can both render markdown. What am I missing?
This is great. I build a Ai status page [1] based around MD files and included obsidian as option. Will look to support this as well.
I am working on something similar. I was also not aware Obsidian is not open source. Something never clicked for me with Obsidian. Will check out your code later. My repo: https://github.com/HabermannR/Nexidion
IMO, Figure out encryption at rest or encrypted note storage / clean self hosting and you'll get a large chunk of "personal note storage" fans.
The one thing I need in a solution like this is multi-player mode that includes a simplified review/track-changes system that I can collaborate with my AI on these docs. Proof.sdk from Every Inc has an interesting approach on this. If I had more free time, I'd build it myself!
Timely, just this morning I took an interest in Obsidian and the immediate query about it being open source returned a disappointing “no”. So count me in to try this one.
> Only necessary features, restrictions foster creativity
Interesting. Productivity tools should not force me getting creative to do the simplest things. Ideally, I can make it adapt to my workflow, not the other way around.
Markdown-first tools always end up reinventing each other.
My note taking endgame is a plain dir with md files and a simple website that gives you fullscreen textarea to view and edit them.
Seems like what Obsidian is like initially. Hope this won't be another Obsidian in the future.
Maybe the app should be available at files.md?
Not under app.files.md? What do you think?
This made me realize that obsidian is *not* opensource, but in a way obsidian made me feel like it was opensource. Obviously now that I researched it, it is quite obvious that it is not, but still it 'feels' like it should be opensource.