Obsidian

Obsidian↗ is a local-first note-taking app built on plain markdown files. It has a massive plugin ecosystem and a devoted community.

I tried it before I switched to Reflect. It didn’t stick for me. Too much configuration. Too many plugins. Manual file management is a high-friction waste of cognitive resources and Obsidian requires a lot of it.

The local-first approach is right. That’s why The Commune box follows the same principle. But Obsidian is designed for manual curation. Commune is designed for automation.

Obsidian works if you want to tinker with your system constantly. Commune works if you want to dump thoughts and let AI handle the structure. Different philosophies.

The graph view is beautiful. But beauty doesn’t help if you can’t capture fast enough to keep up with your thinking.