people
shida li, erica xu, and steph ango — who they are, what they wrote, and what they believe.
the founders
- shida li · co-founder · licatco-founder and cto. waterloo software engineering (2012–17, graduation unconfirmed), nokia imaging hackathon winner in 2013, then linkedin and dropbox. before obsidian he wrote minecraft plugins — orebfuscator and openinv — and built the sync and storage engines under dynalist and obsidian. the least public of the three: his philosophy is expressed architecturally, and his forum answers are the record.
- erica xu · co-founder · silverco-founder and the early product voice. met li at waterloo; ran community, design, and user-facing work while he did 'the hardcore engineering part.' wrote the closed-source rationale, named the product, coined 'ide for thought,' and seeded the forum herself — user #2, invited by licat. today she keeps silverland, a public obsidian publish garden.
- 2016-11about the makers (dynalist forum) · post, dynalist forumthe autobiographical forum post — the waterloo years, the craft split, and why dynalist existed.
erica leads our design efforts as well as most of our user-facing work.
- 2020-10the plugin-security answer (forum) · post, obsidian forumthe engineering posture behind the whole trust model — plugin power over sandboxing, stated before the first controversy ever arrived.
there is absolutely no secure way to run plugins without severely crippling the plugin api.
resurrected on hn in 2025 as the trust model's founding document. - 2024-08-24the august 2024 outage postmortem · post, discord via lemmythe five-hour outage postmortem, posted in discord — a forced reboot plus a misconfigured auto-restart took sync, publish, login, and signup down together.survives only via a lemmy mirror — discord history is not durable.
- 2021exploring the power of note-making (ness labs) · interview, ness labsthe definitive erica xu interview — the product's origins, the code-editor inspiration, and the scratch-your-own-itch universality argument.
obsidian is the ide for thought.
the extensibility of code editors inspired us.
in a way, this verifies that no matter how weird you are, there might be millions out there who are just like you!
the canonical founder interview — later translated for the zh forum. - 2020-08-04open sourcing of obsidian (forum answer) · post, obsidian forumthe four-point closed-source rationale — a small team, plugin freedom over sandboxing, and file-format openness as the answer to lock-in fears.the post every open-source debate cites.
- 2020-08-27why is obsidian named so? · post, obsidian forumthe canonical name explanation — molten thought cooled into glass, plus minecraft's hardest block.
if your raw, unstable thoughts are lava, then obsidian is… well, obsidian. it is your crystallized (and beautiful) knowledge.
- 2021-07-01last chance to get early bird discount · post, obsidian.mdthe early-bird wind-down — and in the same breath, honest guidance to free alternatives like icloud and git. the pricing post as a trust instrument.
- 2021-12-15live preview update · post, obsidian.mdthe live preview update — the biggest editor change in the product's history, in her voice.
- 2025-06-12on understanding · essay, silverlandthe feynman-influenced epistemics essay on silverland — life as a game of predict.
understanding cannot be transmitted through words.
- currentstart here — silverland · document, silverlandher public obsidian publish garden — the education critique, the pattern-and-forces worldview, 172 of 1000 dishes cooked.
public education was formed to produce obedient factory workers, and that tradition stuck. it's time to think for ourselves again.
the ceo who writes
steph ango — kepano — was the independent designer behind inkodye and lumi before he wrote the most-installed obsidian theme and pitched himself to the founders. ink & switch is an intellectual neighbor, not an employer. his essays are the largest single corpus in this dossier.
- 2023-07-01file over app · essay, stephango.comthe three-word strategy — your files should outlive the app that edits them. the essay that turned obsidian's architecture into a philosophy and traveled far beyond the pkm world.
apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to last.
the file is the source of truth, not the application.
the largest of ~15 hn submissions scored 56 points — canonical status out of proportion to traction; it spreads by citation. - 2024-02-10100% user-supported · essay, stephango.comthe anti-vc manifesto — why obsidian takes no investor money, and why a durable file format beats an open codebase when the incentives are wrong.
file over app is more important than open source.
191 points on hacker news. - 2023-10-27quality software deserves your hard-earned cash · essay, stephango.comthe case for paying independent developers — the economics essay the obsidian business model is built to deserve.
quality software deserves your hard-earned cash.
only 36 points on hn — the virality was off-forum, through newsletters and docs citations. - 2022-10-09calmness is a superpower · essay, stephango.comcalm software as an engineering and design value — the temperament obsidian's steady release cadence performs.
calmness is a foundation that you can build anything on top of.
- 2022-10-18photoshop for text · essay, stephango.comlocal-llm text filters — 'synthscribing' prose the way photoshop filters images. the ambition essay that anticipated the local-ai argument obsidian now leans on.
language models need to be local to the device so that they can be private, offline and future-proof.
183 points on hacker news. - 2022-07-23a camera for ideas · essay, stephango.comthe essay that coined 'synthography' — synthetic images as photography for ideas.
- 2025-10-20use the saw, fear the saw · essay, stephango.comthe powerful-tools stance applied to ai — use the saw, fear the saw. capability and caution held together.
- 2025-07-31if you're remote, ramble · essay, stephango.comobsidian's no-meetings remote culture — long unstructured 'rambles' instead of scheduled calls.976 points, 464 comments — kepano's biggest hacker news hit, bigger than any obsidian product post that year.
- 2022-09-17evergreen notes turn ideas into objects · essay, stephango.comthe matuschak-derived pitch for evergreen notes — ideas as objects that accumulate.
- 2023-08-07in good hands · essay, stephango.comomakase trust in software — letting a tool's maker cook, and what a user is owed in return.
- 2023-09-03style is consistent constraint · essay, stephango.comhis personal rules list — style as the residue of consistent constraint, the design principle behind minimal and flexoki.
- 2023-09how i use obsidian · document, stephango.comthe ceo shows his vault — a fractal journaling template that looks nothing like the influencer setups. the most-cited 'how the ceo takes notes' document.203 points on hn; a 526k-view youtube retelling.
- 2016-10-2040 questions to ask yourself every year · essay, stephango.commetafilter-inspired annual self-interview — translated by readers into 35 languages.community-translated into ~35 languages.
- 2023-02-06i'm joining obsidian full-time as ceo · post, obsidian.mdthe ceo letter — a theme author and user pitches the founders rather than the reverse, and the company gains its public voice.
there are no investors pushing us to compromise on these values.
the forum thread became a community celebration. - 2023-06-01the new obsidian icon · post, obsidian.mdhis first company byline — the gem icon, the knapping metaphor, and the first official stats.
- 2025-08-18how the head of obsidian went from superfan to ceo · interview, the verge / decoderthe nilay patel show, guest-hosted by casey newton — how a superfan became ceo, and the full transcript of the obsidian thesis.the biggest mainstream interview obsidian's ceo has given.
- 2023evergreen notes with stephan ango (metamuse ep. 81) · podcast, metamuseevergreen notes on the muse podcast — team of six full-time, and the admission that 'tools for thought' as a label rubs him wrong.
- 2025tools for amplifying our light (dialectic ep. 8) · podcast, dialecticthe long-form biography interview — inkodye, lumi, narvar, obsidian, and the light-amplifying frame.
- 2025the other stuff #28 — kepano · interview, internetvin / youtubethe name origin — kepano is hawaiianized stéphane — plus kepiano, furniture, and the cookie recipe.
- 2023fireside chat with @kepano · interview, linking your thinkingnick milo's fireside chat — team vaults and shared defaults inside the company.
- 2023the future of obsidian (fork my brain) · interview, fork my brainnicole van der hoeven's livestream on the future of obsidian — with her published prep notes.
- 2021future commerce interview · podcast, future commercethe lumi-era interview — well made, slash packaging, and the dtc supply chain before obsidian.
- 2018new disruptors ep. 101 — shipping is violence · podcast, new disruptors'shipping is violence' — the lumi episode on what physical logistics do to software people.
- 2018giant robots ep. 286 · podcast, thoughtbotthe thoughtbot podcast — lumi's stack and why he was writing purescript for a packaging company.
- n.d.why we should return to a local-first culture · talk, youtubethe japan riff — why the oldest companies on earth are local-first in spirit, and what software lost.
the team
- liam cainthe third member — joined the founders early and shows up in the 2021 obsidian october judging roster alongside mgmeyers and kepano.
- johannes theiner · joetheiplugin reviewer and developer on the obsidian team since july 2022 — the human gate the community plugin queue passed through before the automated reviews.
- rebbecca bishop · sigrunixiacustomer experience specialist — docs and support, the person on the other end of the inbox.
interviews and talks
- 2025-08-18how the head of obsidian went from superfan to ceo · the verge / decoderthe nilay patel show, guest-hosted by casey newton — how a superfan became ceo, and the full transcript of the obsidian thesis.
- 2023evergreen notes with stephan ango (metamuse ep. 81) · metamuseevergreen notes on the muse podcast — team of six full-time, and the admission that 'tools for thought' as a label rubs him wrong.
- 2025tools for amplifying our light (dialectic ep. 8) · dialecticthe long-form biography interview — inkodye, lumi, narvar, obsidian, and the light-amplifying frame.
- 2025the other stuff #28 — kepano · internetvin / youtubethe name origin — kepano is hawaiianized stéphane — plus kepiano, furniture, and the cookie recipe.
- 2023fireside chat with @kepano · linking your thinkingnick milo's fireside chat — team vaults and shared defaults inside the company.
- 2023the future of obsidian (fork my brain) · fork my brainnicole van der hoeven's livestream on the future of obsidian — with her published prep notes.
- 2021future commerce interview · future commercethe lumi-era interview — well made, slash packaging, and the dtc supply chain before obsidian.
- 2018new disruptors ep. 101 — shipping is violence · new disruptors'shipping is violence' — the lumi episode on what physical logistics do to software people.
- 2018giant robots ep. 286 · thoughtbotthe thoughtbot podcast — lumi's stack and why he was writing purescript for a packaging company.
- n.d.why we should return to a local-first culture · youtubethe japan riff — why the oldest companies on earth are local-first in spirit, and what software lost.
- 2021exploring the power of note-making (ness labs) · ness labsthe definitive erica xu interview — the product's origins, the code-editor inspiration, and the scratch-your-own-itch universality argument.
the philosophy
themes tracked across the writing: file over app, local-first, longevity, ownership and privacy, calm software, paying for software, tools for thought, the ecosystem, independence, craft and constraint, ai and agency, simplicity.
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.