coverage
what the discourse made of obsidian — the darling phase, the canonization, and the critiques.
the breakout
- 2020-05-27show hn: obsidian'a knowledge base that works on local markdown files' — local-first, plain text, linking like an ide. the launch pitch and the whole product thesis in one sentence, while roam was still hot.~1,087 points, 477 comments — the third-biggest obsidian thread ever.
- 2020-08-23the perfect note-taking appthe perfect note-taking app taxonomy — obsidian named before the fandom formed. abdaal later publicly preferred apple notes, which makes the early endorsement more honest.797k views.
- 2020-09-15obsidian for beginners: start here'obsidian for beginners: start here' — the video that onboarded a generation of users and founded the linking your thinking media operation.2.41m views — the single most important onboarding artifact.
- 2021why i chose obsidian over roama roam 'believer' plan buyer and small investor defects publicly — notable for who was writing, not just what.
- 2021how to switch from roam research to obsidianthe influential migration how-to — roam lock-in as the cautionary contrast that made local markdown feel like freedom.
- 2021-07-12show hn: obsidian for mobilethe mobile launch thread — enthusiasm for the app, sustained grumbling about ios sync workarounds and the license. the first big mobile moment.760 points, 318 comments; #1 product of the day on product hunt.
the canonization
- 2021-12-22the rise of second-brain apps'i saw the best minds of my generation being uploaded onto second-brain apps' — the first big mainstream-culture piece to name the category, bemused and generous at once.tiago forte wrote a case study about the piece itself.
- 2022-10-13obsidian 1.0the 1.0 thread — the community's proof-of-arrival moment, full of users recounting migrations.~1,329 points, 565 comments.
- 2022-12-20show hn: obsidian canvascanvas's launch thread — the spatial-canvas feature landed as the most-loved obsidian moment on hn ever.1,380 points, 387 comments — the highest-scoring obsidian submission identified.
- 2023-10inside the cult of obsidian, the note-taking app with a rabid fan base'the cult of obsidian' — the profile that canonized the community reading. kepano responded 'proudly not a cult,' which only fed the framing.techmeme carry; wonder tools explainer fed it.
- 2022-08-04obsidian review'sophisticated features… a stellar user interface' — the trade-press review, priced against the old grid.
- 2024how to use obsidian for writing and productivity'this application has slowly gone from being a weird app i didn't understand to one i can't imagine functioning without.' wired's practical guide doubled as a conversion story.
- 2025-12-07obsidian review4.0/excellent, 'best for power users' — with the cons that define the product: 'difficult to get started with. no collaboration features.'
- 2024-04-24obsidian: the king of learning toolsthe single biggest obsidian video — a full guide and setup from the study-tube end of youtube.3.26m views.
- 2024-01-17why i like obsidian'the backstage manager of my life' — the love letter whose 368-comment hn thread doubled as a meta-discussion of pkm habits.293 points, 368 comments on hn.
- 2024how i use obsidianthe segment co-founder's workflow — 'the primary goal of the tool should be eliciting thought… 99% of the time i never re-visit my notes, and that is fine.'
- 2024-02-24karpathy's obsidian endorsement'the file is the source of truth, not the application' — karpathy endorses the philosophy, not the note-taking. the endorsement obsidian quotes forever.the most-repeated single endorsement obsidian has.
- 2024i've turned into a tech hippieobsidian as refuge from venture-backed apps — 'a small team that hasn't raised any venture capital' pitched as the feature.
- 2025-08-18obsidian basesthe bases launch thread — 'notion killer' versus 'scope creep' fought to a draw across 255 comments.695 points, 255 comments.
- 2025-08-18how the head of obsidian went from superfan to ceothe superfan-to-ceo decoder interview — the fullest mainstream account of obsidian's philosophy and business.
- 2026-04-02llm knowledge basesobsidian cast as the ide/frontend for an llm-compiled markdown wiki — web clipper for ingest, agents for the gardening. the agent-era reframing at maximum reach.1.2m+ views per analytics drift.
the critiques
- 2022-01-31notes against note-taking systemsthe canonical anti-pkm essay — 'getting lost in your knowledge management system is a fantastic way to avoid creating things.' never names obsidian; defined the counter-genre anyway.spawned a public rebuttal genre.
- 2023-02-03a note on the cargo cult of zettelkasten'a cargo cult of zettelkasten aspirants… may eventually give up, sometimes in shame' — the practioner's warning that the tooling outruns the practice.
- 2023-01-22pkm in retrospect'roam is out of the picture… people were always dreaming about a tool that did the work' — the pkm weekly postmortem on the whole wave.
- 2023-08-25why note-taking apps don't make us smarter'the original promise of roam — that it would improve my thinking — fizzled completely' and 'obsidian's brutalist design wore on me' — the verge's own pkm exhaustion piece.
- 2023stop procrastinating with note-taking apps'stop procrastinating with note-taking apps' — the video-form version of the productivity-porn critique, aimed at the whole category obsidian leads.533k views.
- 2025over-engineering the mind: the obsidian trap'a polished form of procrastination, productivity porn, where optimizing the system substitutes for the hard work' — the obsidian-named version of the chapin argument.
- 2025-10-23be careful with obsidianthe security critique in one post — closed-source, no sandbox, plugins 'reviewed only once and not re-audited on updates,' unsigned dmg. hn split between 'relatively trustworthy' and demands for sandboxing.127 points, 150 comments on hn.
- 2025a plain folder of markdown files beat notion, obsidian, and apple notes'it's beloved by the open-source community despite not being open-source' — the contradiction stated plainly, as a compliment and an accusation at once.
- 2025-08-27obsidian disabling community pluginsthe team remotely deprecated two plugin versions over a bug-report flood — 'does this really justify interacting with a user's personal plugin config?' the local-first promise meets a remote kill switch.
- 2025-07-05security issue: vibe-coded plugins sent for approvalthe ai-generated plugin flood hits the human review queue — a ~300-pr backlog and the governance debate that produced the 2026 automated reviews.
- 2022obsidian publish feels like it should not cost $198 a year'obsidian publish feels like it's still in development and therefore should not cost $198 a year' — the canonical pricing gripe, still cited in alternatives posts four years later.obsidian cut publish pricing in april 2023.
the comparisons
- 2024obsidian vs. notion: which is best?'both are for power users, but notion is more user friendly' — the usability-versus-power framing that defined the mainstream comparison for years.
- 2022-10-15logseq: privacy-first platform for knowledge managementthe open-source rival's big hn thread — 276 points and a comment section that was really about obsidian.276 points.
- 2022-07-27after obsidian and logseq, i give dendron a trythe era-typical three-way shootout — obsidian, logseq, dendron — before the field thinned.129 points, 159 comments.
- 2023-02dendron development stopped?'we were ultimately not able to find product market fit for a venture backed business' — the vc-funded competitor's end-of-life note became the cautionary exhibit in every obsidian business-model debate.
- 2025-09trying logseq'the one complaint i have with obsidian is that it is not open source… i actually pay for the professional license to support the project' — the logseq trial that ends back at obsidian.
- 2026-05-26why i left logseq for obsidian after 2+ yearsthe reverse migration — calls obsidian 'closed-source freeware' and still switches from logseq for reliability. the comparison genre's most honest entry.
- 2026-05-18show hn: files.md — open-source alternative to obsidianan open-source obsidian clone launches at 730 points — out-scoring most obsidian announcements and functioning as a referendum on the closed core.730 points — more than bases, the cli, or headless sync.
the departures
- 2025i ditched obsidian for notebooklm, and i'm so glad i did'the lack of an integrated ai' as the dealbreaker — the first big departure framed as an ai story, not a notes story.
- 2025i stopped using obsidian after finding this self-hosted notes app'i had just built a high-maintenance hobby… i hadn't produced a single original thought' — the departure as confession.
- 2025-05-05ditching obsidian and building my own'i was surprised at this fee because i thought obsidian was open-source… almost $1,000 if i planned to use obsidian for a decade' — the biggest leaving-obsidian thread ever.471 points, 559 comments — the largest departure thread identified.
- 2024-10-18i ditched obsidian for this note app and i'm never going back!'i found myself spending so much time constantly tweaking my setup and installing hundreds of plugins' — the highest-reach departure video.603k views.
- 2023-09-08why are people leaving obsidian for this note app? | capacities reviewthe video that framed the capacities exodus narrative — obsidian's first credible 'people are leaving' story.446k views.
- 2026-04claude just killed the note-taking app. here is proof.'claude just killed the note-taking app' — the agent-era departure genre: if the ai does the synthesis, the vault is just storage.473k views — against isenberg's 455k-view pro-vault video in the same season.
- 2026-07-17rebooting my note-taking'even that had turned into something of a cargo cult… thousands of notes that i never referred to… i just deleted all of those' — the quiet reboot departure.
- 2025how i organized my life using only apple notesthe apple-notes counter-current — the biggest 'you don't need obsidian' video of the era.681k views.
controversies
- 2020–closed source, open filesa data-ownership philosophy shipped as a closed-source app. silver's august 2020 forum answer gave the four-point rationale — small team, plugin freedom over sandboxing, and file-format openness as the real lock-in defense — and the argument has never fully closed.recurring: a popular open-sourcing megathread was auto-hidden by flags in 2022 and restored by staff; an open-source clone's 2026 launch out-scored every obsidian announcement; kepano's hn line — 'file over app is more important than open source' — is the company's settled answer.
- 2020–plugin power without a sandboxcommunity plugins run with full system access and no sandbox — licat called a secure sandbox 'absolutely' impossible without crippling the api. reviewers saw submissions once at entry; updates were not re-audited until the 2026 automated reviews.the trust model held socially for years, then met its stress tests: the phantompulse rat campaign in 2026 and the vibe-coded submission flood that forced automated per-version review.
- 2021–2023the pricing stackthe early service pricing read as premium: publish at $16–20/month per site, sync at $8–10/month, a required $50/user/year commercial license. the doto post made the publish gripe canonical.the company cut rather than defended: publish repriced to $96/year in april 2023, a $4 sync standard tier arrived in 2024, and the commercial license went optional in 2025.
- 2026-06the sync price hikethe june 2026 sync repricing — ~35% annual increase, the 1 gb tier eliminated, no grandfathering — produced the loudest backlash of the service era.forum and reddit threads accumulated; the fullest write-up (remio.ai) carries ai-embellished statistics, so the backlash is real but its sharpest numbers are unverified.
- 2021–ios and icloudios friction is the product's oldest wound: icloud-synced vaults hang on 'loading workspace,' and advanced data protection took app load from ~5s to ~45s in user reports.years of forum threads with workspace-mobile.json surgery as the fix; obsidian's own sync is the sanctioned answer, which reads to critics as the friction monetizing itself.
- 2025-08bases and the scope questionbases turned notes into a database — and split the room. 'notion killer' reads alongside 'scope creep': whether a notes app should want to be a database is the vision question of the kepano era.695-point hn thread fought to a draw; even favorable coverage called kepano's framing 'a bit too flowery.' the counter-argument: properties shipped in 2023 and the community's dataview had asked for this for years.
- 2022–productivity pornthe productivity-porn critique — the system as procrastination. chapin's essay named the genre, the obsidian trap post named the product, and the departure videos keep finding the same confession: the vault became the hobby.obsidian's own community absorbed the critique — calv.info's 'i never re-visit my notes, and that is fine' is the genre's best in-house rebuttal.
- 2025–2026the plugin review queuethe plugin queue as a governance problem: one human reviewer, a ~300-pr backlog, a flood of vibe-coded submissions, and a community divided between open gates and curation.the 2026 directory relaunch answered it — automated per-version security review and a developer dashboard, and the 2,300-submission backlog cleared.
- 2026-04phantompulsephantompulse — a remote-access trojan delivered through a social-engineered shared vault: shell commands and a hider plugin, blockchain c2. a weaponization of the trust model, not a code vulnerability.366-point hn thread split between 'this is social engineering, not obsidian's bug' and 'the trust model made this possible.' the company had shipped 'less is safer' supply-chain guidance months earlier.
- 2020–no real-time collaborationno real-time collaboration — the feature every comparison review lists as a con. sync merges files; it does not put two cursors in one note.pcmag lists it as the standing con; the local-first answer is that single-writer files are the price of ownership. the open question is whether agents change the math — a machine gardener does not need a second cursor.
sentiment eras
- 2020the roam refugee wave · positivethe show hn hit ~1,087 points while roam still owned the category; the early coverage is migration how-tos written by roam believers and investors defecting publicly.
- 2021–2022the community bloom · positivemobile ships #1 on product hunt, the cut names the second-brain category, obsidian october and gems of the year institutionalize the community — the coverage is onboarding and enthusiasm.
- 2022–2023the canonization · positive1.0 and canvas produce the two biggest hn threads (1,329 and 1,380 points); fast company canonizes the 'cult'; kepano's ceo letter and 'file over app' give the coverage its vocabulary.
- 2023–2024the skepticism shelf · mixedthe counter-genre matures: chapin's anti-pkm essay, the cargo-cult warning, shu omi's capacities video, dendron's end-of-life as the cautionary exhibit. sentiment stays net-positive with a real critical literature underneath.
- 2025–early 2026the tension year · mixedbases splits the room, the departure genre goes mass-market (notebooklm, plain folders, apple notes), 'be careful with obsidian' makes the security case, and the biggest leaving thread ever runs 559 comments.
- 2026the agent-era reframe · mixedkarpathy's 1.2m-view llm-wiki post recasts the vault as agent infrastructure; the cli and headless sync ship into it; phantompulse and the plugin-directory overhaul fight the security story in the same months.
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.