13 ms·

Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

730 points by zakirullin 5mo ago

abstract257 5mo ago
Seams we had a similar urge recently. I like the simplicity of your approach. Will post a show a little later about my approach to notetaking and LLM integration.
ShivamNayak11 5mo ago
[dead]
krthr 5mo ago
I really like the look and feel!
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Thanks a lot! I've been perfecting things for 5 years. A week ago I decided to open source it finally :)
  - dewey 5mo ago
    That's the comment that made me check it out in more detail, as that sticks out from all the other projects that were built in a weekend in the past months.
    - zakirullin 5mo ago
      Thanks! There's a lot to it, and for years me and my friends were using the project. A lot of us built knowledge bases, and we enjoyed it all quite a bit.
      - snjnlsn 5mo ago
        are you still using the project?
        zakirullin 5mo ago
        Sure. I can't live without it :) Notes, journal, tasks, projects - everything is in there. Whenever I have a new machine, first thing I do - I open the app =)
        timebeforeland 5mo ago
        Incredible, I will check it out
        zakirullin 5mo ago
        All the friends that started years ago also use the app to this very day.
  - jonotime 5mo ago
    This is neat. I dont get how sync works. Is it server side? Or is there some client side oauth flow? I dont see it.
    - krthr 5mo ago
      [dead]
- ctippett 5mo ago
  It appeals to me as a minimalistic version of the Bear[1] notes app. A few years ago I played around with copying the Bear app interface for the web, the idea was to create a visually identical mockup of the app so you could immediately visualise changes made when customising various theme values. I stalled with the implementation of the last part, but the rest of it is up at bear.christippett.dev [1] https://bear.app https://bear.app
dilawar 5mo ago
Nice project. People may also want to checkout Tiddlywiki.
- blamestross 5mo ago
  Gods I love and loath Tiddlywiki. It has some of the most convoluted javascript written before javascript ever actually got all the features that made javascript convoluted. But it did the job!
- swed420 5mo ago
  > People may also want to checkout Tiddlywiki. Also Zettlr
  - alwillis 5mo ago
    > Tiddlywiki Love Tiddlywiki. It's amazing the amount of functionality it has, even if you use it in "one html file" mode. Great for making a web garden [1]. [1]: https://nesslabs.com/digital-garden-tiddlywiki https://nesslabs.com/digital-garden-tiddlywiki
- GCUMstlyHarmls 5mo ago
  I ended up landing on https://silverbullet.md https://silverbullet.md. It checks a lot of boxes for me, - self hosted - works offline (mostly) - "just md" BUT - scriptable or extendable by lua, rendered in page, eg `${1 + 1}` outputs `2`, but you can do a lot more, such as query pages and tags with a LINQ type query interface.
  - nichos 5mo ago
    And the Dev has been awesome. Very active project.
- Fogest 5mo ago
  I've been using TrilliumNext (fork of Trillium project that is archived) and haven't been able to find an alternative I liked more. Only thing I don't really like is that it's not really stored in Markdown and since you have the ability to have notes in multiple trees it can get a bit messy when trying to move to other systems. I tried moving to Obsidian Notes and found myself missing Trillium. It's nice to be able to just open the web browser and have access to your own self-hosted notes with an editor anywhere. You also can set it up so if you add a sharing tag to a note you can easily share a link to the note. I believe Obsidian allows similar but only if you pay, and it's also not self-hosted. I've tried a wiki style approach before like Tiddlywiki, but I feel like it is a whole different concept of taking and making notes that often is a bit more cumbersome, but maybe it works better with how some people think.
armsaw 5mo ago
Is there a way to follow inline links from a mobile device? Doesn’t seem to work for me in mobile Safari.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  It is not very well tested on mobiles yet. People use chatbot on the mobiles - way more convenient. You can both read/write notes through the chat.
zakirullin 5mo ago
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.
- pspeter3 5mo ago
  What makes Golang a great fit in your opinion?
  - zakirullin 5mo ago
    Server setup before the rewrite: docker + php-fpm + php7 + larvel + nginx + redis + cron + worker + certbot Server after the rewrite to Golang: server, a 15MB no-dependencies binary that has everything.
    - lioeters 5mo ago
      That's brilliant. Can't beat the convenience of a single-file executable!
    - LinuxAmbulance 5mo ago
      That is a pretty strong argument for Go!
      - backscratches 5mo ago
        This is the reason I like go and rust so much
    - voidnap 5mo ago
      Using Go means you are forgoing Docker...? Ok. Also if you don't need certbot anymore is your service managing its own ssl certs with letsencrypt? Isn't it generally easier to configure with a reverse proxy like nginx or caddy and terminate SSL at the edge? That's literally caddy's whole thing that it does SSL for you so that it doesn't concern your application.
qitz 5mo ago
Nice Project, I really like the look!
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Thanks! I am glad you enjoyed it. For the past week alone, I made 500+ commits, fixing all sorts of UI/UX fixes to perfect things out. I believe I put too much time into it during all those years, but I don't regret it. Because I use the project on daily basis.
himata4113 5mo ago
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.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  That was the reason a few years ago I started this project. It seems like software in AI-era should be distributed open source. So that anyone could tweak it however he wants. Not though clunky plugins system.
  - philipallstar 5mo ago
    > It seems like software in AI-era should be distributed open source. That makes it easy for AI to be trained on it.
    - theultdev 5mo ago
      Yeah, also makes it easy for humans to train on it. That's the point of open source, sharing the knowledge. We'll all make the same shit over and over if noone shares. But if we all share, then the only thing left to make is the unknown.
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
      - philipallstar 5mo ago
        That doesn't explain why particularly in the AI era software should be easily accessible. All that stuff you said isn't relevant as it applies in the pre-AI era as well.
        theultdev 5mo ago
        If anything it matters more. I want both myself and my AI agents to have as much knowledge as possible. Sharing is always better.
ocimbote 5mo ago
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!
- solarkraft 5mo ago
  > When I read "an alternative", I assumed feature-parity and API compatibility When I read “alternative” I immediately had a rant in my head about people calling things alternatives that are not.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  > When I read "an alternative", I assumed feature-parity and API compatibility. But what I found out was entirely different and much more interesting. Thanks for a good observation! Indeed, I don't position it as Obsidian alternative. I don't know a better pitch for it just yet. For me that's something about: simplicity, lazy flow of adding things, readiness to use out of the box. To focus on what works, and not what is fancy.
  - jedimastert 5mo ago
    I would say "open source markdown knowledge-base similar to Obsidian" but I'm not a marketing guy
    - bastijn 5mo ago
      Your markdown notes without the circus. The boringly simple knowledge base.
- 5mo ago
amai 5mo ago
I'm missing export in https://textbundle.org/ https://textbundle.org/ format. "TextBundle brings convenience back - by bundling the Markdown text and all referenced images into a single file."
- gonzalohm 5mo ago
  If you want to bundle your images in markdown why don't you just use an HTML section with the image encoded as base64 data?
  - amai 5mo ago
    Why does every webpage not encode its images as base64 data?
    - gonzalohm 5mo ago
      Because web browsers support hyperlinking there is no need to embed everything into one big html file
      - amai 5mo ago
        And markdown does also support hyperlinks, like HTML. So it makes sense to use that feature.
        gonzalohm 5mo ago
        But the comment above asked for support for a feature that allows to embed images inside markdown, hence my reply
    - deafpolygon 5mo ago
      load times… much easier to deliver a small html page quickly, then allow progressive downloads on images.
trvz 5mo ago
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.
- arthurofbabylon 5mo ago
  Scope out minimal.app (or minimal.app/#beta for anyone who wants to contribute to the roadmap). Opinionated, native-only, extremely focused.
riffruff24 5mo ago
another one in the same space: https://helixnotes.com/ https://helixnotes.com/
- skrobul 5mo ago
  Thank you! I am long time obsidian user looking for something that will work decently on Android and this looks promising. I only really struggle with one basic feature - I want to be able to write note within 1-2 seconds of clicking the app icon. Obsidian makes it 10-15 seconds at best. The HelixNotes sometimes can get this in under 10, still looking for better options.
  - duskdozer 5mo ago
    I'm having the same issue with Standard Notes. It's almost 30 seconds now and becoming an issue, especially with Android's aggressive memory freeing. It wasn't so bad early on but it gets worse as notes accumulate.
- swah 5mo ago
  Is this related to https://helix-editor.com/ https://helix-editor.com/ ??
  - benatkin 5mo ago
    AFAICT no. It's similar to Hermes Agent and the Hermes JavaScript engine. They are two very different things. Though you could argue that both Helix projects are editors but I don't think that's meaningful in this instance.
  - backscratches 5mo ago
    No, its a really ignorant name collision. And the helix text editor is much better.
- lucius_verus 5mo ago
  I'm really glad you mentioned this --- I've been looking for a Rust or Tauri-based Obsidian replacement for years, and this is almost everything I want (and much closer to what I want than Files.md). Now that I'm playing with it, I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more traction on HN or Reddit.
nielsbjerg 5mo ago
There's also https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/
backscratches 5mo ago
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.
- Galanwe 5mo ago
  Right, but most people want to be able to consult their notes on the go, quickly add items from their phone, etc.
  - backscratches 5mo ago
    I do too. The setup I've described is best for big screen work when I need tools that dont compromise in any way.
  - saint_yossarian 5mo ago
    To be fair you can just keep using Obsidian or similar apps on your phone for this, along with an external sync solution like Syncthing. I tried it for a bit in the past, the main friction is apps formatting Markdown slightly differently (indents, blank lines).
    - backscratches 5mo ago
coreyh14444 5mo ago
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!
RivoLink 5mo ago
Same idea, but directly inside your terminal: https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf
- zethsg 5mo ago
  This is perfect! thanks for sharing it
  - RivoLink 5mo ago
    Glad it helped you.
- backscratches 5mo ago
  I use tree-md for same end when I want to see my markdown a bit prettier https://github.com/Epistates/treemd https://github.com/Epistates/treemd
  - RivoLink 5mo ago
    It’s interesting too. Thanks!
dodyg 5mo ago
Or just use LogSeq https://discuss.logseq.com/t/whats-new-with-logseq-db-may-16th-2026/35020 https://discuss.logseq.com/t/whats-new-with-logseq-db-may-16...
- Fogest 5mo ago
  That markdown mirror is a pretty neat feature. I've been using Trillium for my notes and the way they save/store the notes is actually one of the things I dislike about it even though I love the application itself. I tried at one point exporting everything to markdown and it worked... but Trillium allows you to have notes in multiple places but they exist essentially as just a pointer in the backend to that note. So it made the export a bit wonky as some instances of a note are just an empty shell and don't have the actual contents. So you have to try and move notes around to get their markdown files in the right places. I've ended up still sticking with Trilium however as I like being able to have notes in multiple locations like this.
  - xstas1 5mo ago
    This markdown mirror is a partial solution to a problem that does not exist in "normal" Logseq (what's being rebranded to Logseq OG). The markdown files ARE the data (which syncs beautifully over Dropbox and the like.)
- xstas1 5mo ago
  I am a Logseq user and I was under the impression that development had stalled or better, stabilized (frankly, most software does NOT need a constant stream of updates). Based on this post, it looks like they're back - and they've chugged some vibe juice.
takethebus 5mo ago
nice, going to point my hermes agent to this instead of obsidian
tinyhouse 5mo ago
Looks nice but seems overkill to me to run a Go server to sync with a telegram bot to authenticate. Maybe I don't fully understand the use case.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  You'll right on this - I'll cover this in great detail. You don't need to spin up the server, only in case you want your own infra. Optional sync is only working with chatbot auth for now, but I'll do something about it.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  I added a table with all possible setup options: https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md#ways-to-use-it https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md#ways-to-use-it
parweb 5mo ago
[flagged]
jedimastert 5mo ago
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.
- alwillis 5mo ago
  > waffling about moving from Notion to something local/markdown based for a while. Check out Tolaria [1]. Open source, works locally, uses markdown, no-databases. Git client built-in. Even has Notion-style input. [1]: https://tolaria.md https://tolaria.md
  - NetOpWibby 5mo ago
    This looks REALLY good, thanks.
    - alwillis 5mo ago
      Most other note taking apps haven’t worked for me… but Tolaria fits like a glove.
      - NetOpWibby 5mo ago
        I'm hoping Tolaria will do the same for me. It's been a journey!
calebm 5mo ago
I love the simplicity.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Thanks! That's what I was striving for :) Simplicity started from the domain name.
FailMore 5mo ago
1) Very nice implementation 2) Very nice domain! Did you always own "files.md"? 3) Re storing things on your server, what is the security layer around that? I have been building a slightly different solution to the same problem. So far I’m pretty happy with the results and I have enough returning users that I think others are too (https://sdocs.dev/analytics https://sdocs.dev/analytics). I’ve built SmallDocs (https://sdocs.dev https://sdocs.dev; Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777633). SDocs is cli (`sdoc file.md`) -> instantly rendered Markdown file in the browser When you install the cli it gives you the option to add a note in your base agent file (`~/.claude/CLAUDE.md`, etc.). This means every agent chat knows about SDocs and you can say “sdoc me the plan when you’re done with it” and the file will pop open instead of you having to find that terminal session to know it’s done. Going browser first means you’re not required to install anything to get a great experience. Despite being in the browser, the content of SDocs rendered Markdown files remain entirely local to you. SDoc urls contain your markdown document's content in compressed base64 in the url fragment (the bit after the `#`): https://sdocs.dev/#md=GzcFAMT...(this https://sdocs.dev/#md=GzcFAMT...(this is the contents of your document)... The url fragment is never sent to the server (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/F https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/F...: "The fragment is not sent to the server when the URI is requested; it is processed by the client"). The sdocs.dev webapp is purely a client side decoding and rendering engine for the content stored in the url fragment. This also means you can share your .md files privately by sharing the url. I've enjoyed exploiting the HTML rendering side of things which is possible by displaying Markdown in a browser. I’ve added tagged code blocks that the agent is given documentation on how to use. Eg ```chart or ```mermaid (for mermaid diagrams). These then become interactive elements on the page (mermaid is best example of this currently). See live renderings of these options here - charts gallery: https://sdocs.dev/s/yO3WbxFf#k=arcDBnizla5n437VFAeiQcwlu8kh_WexPGdSz2tA5u0 https://sdocs.dev/s/yO3WbxFf#k=arcDBnizla5n437VFAeiQcwlu8kh_..., diagrams gallery: https://sdocs.dev/s/B_Ux11DV#k=KsvheEkiBFai6acnoIJnrOdfVRS5utc7diEw4xly2GY https://sdocs.dev/s/B_Ux11DV#k=KsvheEkiBFai6acnoIJnrOdfVRS5u...
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  > Very nice domain! Did you always own "files.md"? Thanks! I bought it about 3 years ago. Back then, the project was just a chatbot. But already back then, I kind of had an idea where I want it all to go. I wanted the simplicity (and 0 cognitive load!) to start right from the domain name! Files in .md - files.md! > Re storing things on your server, what is the security layer around that? For the most part I use the project from my Telegram bot. And due to that, it is not possible to do proper E2E. Will see if people use the chatbot, if not, we can consider E2E.
conqrr 5mo ago
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.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Thanks for your warm words! > I'm gonna try Files.md for some inspiration on what I could be missing For the most part I was thinking more about what I can remove :D This inspires me. What kind of minimal feature set does one need to improve his thinking...
gigatree 5mo ago
Big fan of the note up front about how long they’ve been working on it, feel like we’ll be seeing a lot more of that as an anti-slop signal
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Thanks. Even though there's "LICENSE.md 3 years ago" file, today I also added this text :) This is hand crafted, for the most part.
prepend 5mo ago
This is neat, but I need a non-server-side program for this. I want everything local and running for the next 20+ years.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  You can just clone and use offline. Just open web/index.html file, it absolutely requires no server. If you want a local server though, it is easy to setup: https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md/blob/main/docs/your-own-server.md https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md/blob/main/docs/your-o...
- bricej13 5mo ago
  TiddlyWiki? https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/
  - CGamesPlay 5mo ago
    Which has been around for 22 years now!
- gbro3n 5mo ago
  This is why I built https://www.asnotes.io https://www.asnotes.io - It's an extension for VS Code. I needed obsidian but usable on corporate networks that don't allow Obsidian or other pkms apps. It's designed to be version control friendly so no sync server is needed either (just use Git)
- t_mahmood 5mo ago
  Self-plug, I'm working on one, local, native, no web based ui, and minimalist. And it has no external dependency. The data is stored as simple text file, and the format is easily searchable with *nix tools. Not going to be open source or free though, with 2 year perpetual license. I wonder how much that would interest you? My target is people who wants todo.txt like simplicity, but few useful bits. Only for Linux and Windows for now.
- backscratches 5mo ago
  I recommend the helix text editor with the markdown-oxide LSP (and rumdl formatter if you feel fancy). All open source and even if you never update them they will work forever.
theanonymousone 5mo ago
Thank you for actually acquiring the .md domain corresponding to your software and avoiding some security holesof the future :)
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  I bought this domain with the promise that one day I'll release my pet-project. So did I, 3 years later :)
samuell 5mo ago
I want something like this, but completely terminal based
- axelav 5mo ago
  nvim + markdown oxide is the closest I've found https://github.com/Feel-ix-343/markdown-oxide https://github.com/Feel-ix-343/markdown-oxide
  - backscratches 5mo ago
    Works so well
- RivoLink 5mo ago
  Maybe leaf : https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf
- tasuki 5mo ago
  I use vimwiki. I know vim and appreciate not having to learn a new thing. The output is just markdown files linking to each other, so it's very portable.
- backscratches 5mo ago
  Like other commenter referenced, the markdown-oxide LSP replicates the core of obsidian better than obsidian does. I use it with helix. I described by setup in more detail above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180639
Kovah 5mo ago
> 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.
- KetoManx64 5mo ago
  That's why Obsidian is as popular as it is. It starts with a foundation of features that are necessary, and then lets you add/create extensions to expand it as your creativity desires. That line above is just an attempt to convince the user that the lack of features/extensibility is a positive thing.
jklinger410 5mo ago
Only works in Chrome!
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  You can use any browser. But Local File System API has limited support in other browsers.
rahilb 5mo ago
Lots of Markdown enthusiasts in the thread... if you want to sync your markdown tasks to Reminders.app please pay me some money for the privilege: https://turquoisehexagon.co.uk/remindersync https://turquoisehexagon.co.uk/remindersync or just vibe your own solution :)
nodeflare 5mo ago
Markdown-first tools always end up reinventing each other.
jlos 5mo ago
So you saw a product that (1) gives you complete control of your data (2) uses an open format (3) only charges for sync, publish, and commercial use, and you thought to yourself: "What a great use of my time building a competitor that adds no value, just to save a few dollars a month on sync and publishing. I hope other people value their time as little as I do and contribute" Have fun!
- bachmeier 5mo ago
  But Obsidian doesn't even require a few dollars a month for sync. You can use Github or whatever sync service you want. Your data is just a directory of markdown files. That said, I've paid for the sync service for years, but only because it works really well on Linux. I've always been impressed with Obsidian's first-class Linux offerings.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- yawnxyz 5mo ago
  it's nice to have open source implementations so you can extend / borrow / merge / morph features and ideas into something else
- duskdozer 5mo ago
  I often find irritations in programs that are either too low-priority or too idiosyncratic to end up getting changed by the owners/maintainers, so having easy access to the source is a huge plus for me, regardless of the product cost.
smokel 5mo ago
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 :)
- jatora 5mo ago
  I too have vibe-coded my own personal obsidian/sublime replacement in rust, and also ran into WYSIWYG table editing and rendering issues with opus 4.7. Took a couple iterations but now formulas/rendering are perfect. GPT5.5 actually handled that very well compared to 4.7
  - manny_rat 5mo ago
    I would love to hear more about this, did you use a GUI library? Does it perform well?
    - smokel 5mo ago
      Not the one you're replying to, but "my" system is an Angular application that makes heavy use of CodeMirror. One instance for the base editor, and one instance for the currently active cell. The other cells are rendered to HTML through a different code path (no CodeMirror involved there). For rendering mathematical formulas it uses MathJax. A global context-based keyboard handler such as the one in VSCode allows for Emacs key bindings.
      - bwat49 5mo ago
        I've vibe coded a codemirror table editor (as a plugin for joplin) using a nested codemirror instance for the cell editor, in my case using joplin's built in command to render markup for the inactive cells: https://github.com/bwat47/joplin-rich-tables https://github.com/bwat47/joplin-rich-tables it works well but I'm not much of a programmer and probably ended up with a crazy over engineered architecture lol I was surprised that there weren't any existing libraries for this (there is one now but it was created after I started work on my plugin: https://github.com/ckant/codemirror-markdown-tables https://github.com/ckant/codemirror-markdown-tables)
RHab 5mo ago
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 https://github.com/HabermannR/Nexidion
nave94hn 5mo ago
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roland35 5mo ago
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UnnoTed 5mo ago
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 https://i.imgur.com/ro9Zq9w.png [1]: https://i.imgur.com/pbJcTQF.gif https://i.imgur.com/pbJcTQF.gif
- phalangion 5mo ago
  If AI’m building isn’t a typo, I kinda like it as a way to accurately claim what I’m building with AI.
  - mannanj 5mo ago
    Same here. I might want to use this. Would be interesting to AI build a way to see how phrases and ways of speaking like this spread, and track where the original idea could have originated and morphed and how networks spread like this.
  - UnnoTed 5mo ago
    You AI't wrong, just a wordplay to inform about the help of AI.
    - canadiantim 5mo ago
      You’re AIright
      - KingMob 5mo ago
        "AIright, AIright, AIright!" - Matthew McConnAIhey
  - skybrian 5mo ago
obsidianbases1 5mo ago
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.
Ifkaluva 5mo ago
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.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Thanks! I've been growing my knowledge base for many years, with great results. And you really need all that much to start taking notes. No techniques, no workflows, just the the simplest setup would do. "Second Brain", however, brings excitement to people's minds. But in reality it just doesn't work. It makes great sales, though.
- bityard 5mo ago
  Well, we know that it's impossible to remember everything. Humans are absolutely terrible at accurately recalling things that they observed even a few minutes in the past. But we also can't remember nothing and just dump _everything_ into the second brain, otherwise we'd have no map, no context, no way to even know how to look for what we need in the moment. It would be like taking a random teenager off the street, handing them an electronics engineering textbook, and asking them to build a power supply on the spot. So there is definitely a spectrum. Everyone seems to disagree on the optimal point on the spectrum and that is almost certainly because it varies greatly from person to person. My personal experience has been that simply writing extremely detailed notes in the first place makes the information "sticky" in my brain, and greatly increases the likelihood that I won't even _need_ to directly reference the notes in the future. Fun little catch-22 there.
  - dcuthbertson 5mo ago
    > Well, we know that it's impossible to remember everything. Yet it's possible to remember a lot. Those who pass "The Knowledge" test are truly inspirational. See this 60 Minutes report on London's Black Cab drivers [0] [0]: https://60minutestonight.com/the-knowledge-60-minutes-reports-on-londons-legendary-black-cab-tradition/ https://60minutestonight.com/the-knowledge-60-minutes-report...
sn0n 5mo ago
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.
ivanjermakov 5mo ago
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.
- deafpolygon 5mo ago
  Isn’t that a text editor?
  - ivanjermakov 5mo ago
    You can both edit text files directly in server or edit them via the web view from any device.
pgwalsh 5mo ago
A docker release would be great. Looks like a more modern version of ManyNotes.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Hm. I thought that there's one single binary + one script to deploy, so Docker is not needed...
bityard 5mo ago
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.
- teppeik 5mo ago
  > 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. I found this to be similar to my own opinion. So, what tools are you currently using? I'm interested to hear about it.
helterskelter 5mo ago
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)
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Thanks! I love being honest. Notes alone wouldn't do.
getoffside 5mo ago
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insane_dreamer 5mo ago
Looks nice! Doesn't work in Safari though, which is a non-starter for me.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  In Safari it should work in OPFS. Because Safari still doesn't support Local FileSystem API :(
levmiseri 5mo ago
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.
- a-arbabian 5mo ago
  Not very classy to piggy back off of this post to advertise your own text editor. Just make a new "Show HN" post.
  - levmiseri 5mo ago
    You are right, I removed it.
gamander2 5mo ago
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- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Once they'll support Local FileSystem API!
xiaoyu2006 5mo ago
Why will I want to feed my life into LLM
- ryanhecht 5mo ago
  In my case, it helps improve my ADHD-affected executive function. It lowers the barrier to entry to ingesting information into a system I know I can extract it from later. It gives me peace of mind to know I can ramble semi-coherently at the speed of conversation and know that the salient points are being captured. Local models will continue to improve, if your concern is privacy -- already they do a decent enough job at interacting with a well-schema'd PKM
gaws 5mo ago
Let us know when this isn't a Chrome-specific tool.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  As soon as all major browsers support Local FileSystem API :)
jwillmer 5mo ago
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. [1]: https://github.com/jwillmer/ai-status https://github.com/jwillmer/ai-status
Mobius01 5mo ago
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.
denisdev1 5mo ago
I liked it, will try. Good job
desireco42 5mo ago
As a user of Obsidian I like this, it looks good and clean. I use Typora often as it is easier to start in a folder and just work on the files, on top it has nice visuals. Very good work.
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Thanks for your warm words! I did a lot of experimentations with the UX/UI and colors, glad you appreciated the effort :)
zakirullin 5mo ago
Maybe the app should be available at files.md? Not under app.files.md? What do you think?
- GlitchRider47 5mo ago
  Idk it's pretty common practice to have your landing page at the base url, with the app itself located on a subdomain. Off the top of my head I think of standardnotes, linkwarden, raindrop.
- alfirous 5mo ago
  It can work. Check https://kraa.io/ https://kraa.io/, you can write immediately even without login.
thr1owaway9621 5mo ago
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.
- bel8 5mo ago
  AI will have to be very reliable, fast and free to replace md files with HTML. Because I often dump text into md files and the operation is instant. Same for small tweaks.
- al_borland 5mo ago
  For me, a key tenant of any good note taking system is low friction. Leaning on an LLM feels like significant friction. Formatting something into HTML manually also feels like a lot of fiction. Individual HTML files for notes would also be a friction filled experience for opening and browsing, without some kind of template to allow for navigation of the notes within the browser. This ends up turning into a local wiki very quickly.
  - ramoz 5mo ago
    I was about to comment: "HTML creates too much friction after doing all sorts of visual explainers" ... thanks for articulating it well. As a layer of abstraction, it also creates more requirements: need a browser, likely need includes/cdn libs to avoid bloat, all sorts of other things. Markdown is consumable, diffable, shareable in raw form - and you can add enrichment layers on top without much effort.
Igor_Wiwi 5mo ago
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 https://mdview.io which handles large diagrams/tables much better than typical note apps
- keithnz 5mo ago
  I have a simple script that previews md pages as html and hosts a liveserver so it dynamically updates, renders mermaid / syntax highlighting etc. Super useful when working with an agent when planning out a piece of software. Page dynamically updates as you go, and super useful to have diagrams visible. I'm prompting a lot more to get diagrams included as part of the planning stage (or whenever).
Myzel394 5mo ago
Does in support plugins?
baconhigh 5mo ago
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.
thebeardisred 5mo ago
What is this providing over similarly Markdown based open source note taking applications like Joplin? (https://joplinapp.org/ 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.
andrescordova 5mo ago
Joplin?
xezpeleta 5mo ago
I've also tried something similar: https://xezpeleta.github.io/Idaztian/ https://xezpeleta.github.io/Idaztian/ Definitely not easy to replicate Obsidian UX.
vadepaysa 5mo ago
ah well, you know, obsidian is a bit of a muscle memory now. I have tried to replace it many times with no success. I will try this one too.
tsurba 5mo ago
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.
- desireco42 5mo ago
  I stopped using Dropbox, but this is pleasant news that they have this much space. I use git and it works well and gives me security my notes will not dissapear. On mobile used to be more difficult so I used specialized app before but now Obsidian git works well enough. It can be better but overall it works well enough for me. I would dictate things to my phone in daily note and later process those more in desktop.
- chr15m 5mo ago
  It saves to sqlite though, not markdown files you can edit on disk.
  - thingortwo 5mo ago
    Why is that a problem if you are already going to be using specific software to interface with your notes don't you want it stored in an optimized foolproof format that is also one the preferred format recommended by library of congress? And if you want always direct edit access and do it often why not then a simple plain text since either way you will be dependent on the software if you like the additional features it offers which aren't inside .md like linking and other
    - Macha 5mo ago
      You can use standard markdown links in obsidian, and even wikilinks are often supported (e.g. pulldown-cmark supports them). Or you can configure obsidian to prefer standard markdown links (https://obsidian.md/help/settings#Use%20Wikilinks https://obsidian.md/help/settings#Use%20Wikilinks) My notes were _already_ a folder of markdown, so I pretty seamlessly moved from VS Code as my notes app to obsidian and could move back to a text editor if obsidian turns evil. This might be part of why I’m less enthusiastic about their canvas thing, but then I was never a mind map or scrap board person anyway.
dakolli 5mo ago
Off topic, but telegram bot integration for tools/projects is very under rated. I try to incorporate telegram bots for all my personal projects. There's almost always a great quality of life feature opportunities that require minimal effort to implement. I particularly like having a tg bots for observability, certain errors and certain events will get sent to a dedicated bot for my project. Highly recommend.
humanfromearth9 5mo ago
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.
michahell 5mo ago
no files sent to the server…telegram chatbot? ok
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  That's totally optional, and not enabled by default.
rbbydotdev 5mo ago
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: https://github.com/rbbydotdev/opal https://github.com/rbbydotdev/opal
henry_kang 5mo ago
[flagged]
neucoas 5mo ago
Throwing SSL error here
- riffic 5mo ago
  that's still the case according to SSL Labs: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=app.files.md https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=app.files.md
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Fixed.
throwatdem12311 5mo ago
I don’t understand these apps. Zed and VSCode can both render markdown. What am I missing?
- system2 5mo ago
  They are not note-taking apps. They can't link notes to each other. They are heavy. I personally do not know anyone using VS Code for note-taking.
  - throwatdem12311 5mo ago
    Can’t you just link markdown files together with regular hyperlinks? Claude Code is my “note taking app” these days and it does a great job organizing and linking my markdown notes together, and I just open the folder in Zed and render the markdown if I need it.
    - system2 5mo ago
      You will regret when claude decides to wipe all your notes in the name of organization.
sbinnee 5mo ago
The chat interface is an interesting take. With AI assistants in full swing, it now looks viable.
xhevahir 5mo ago
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.
anotherevan 5mo ago
QOwnNotes is a similar project in this domain. https://www.qownnotes.org/ https://www.qownnotes.org/ (Note: The NextCloud integration is entirely optional, I've never used it. The front page makes it sound like a requirement.)
isaisabella 5mo ago
Seems like what Obsidian is like initially. Hope this won't be another Obsidian in the future.
dhruv3006 5mo ago
I too built something similar but as an API Client - https://voiden.md/ https://voiden.md/ - Obsidian really picking up !
jzer0cool 5mo ago
self-hosted sync - is only local networked devices syncs all over internet?
ivolimmen 5mo ago
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.
tomburgs 5mo ago
One strength of Obsidian is actually it's plugins. All of the plugins are fully open source so I think if someone truly plans to disrupt it they should make their editor interoperable with Obsidian plugins. It's a bit strange to me that in 2026 where code is allegedly "free" we're still building these web apps that pretend to be desktop apps. In part I understand it, and logically a PWA must be better than electron for the most part (takes up less space, doesn't install another browser on my computer) yet I cannot see myself installing a PWA on my Mac. I feel like in general I've come to the point in my life where if a desktop app is not native I am not installing it (apps that I NEED to have for one reason or another are excluded, but I'll still grunt)
- thingortwo 5mo ago
  Most people actually just prefer convenience with web apps you just instantly go to a domain and can check it out also secure and sandboxed by default since I don't have to worry what they are doing in other parts of my system which is a big worry with current supply chain attacks and what not. Their "PWA" marketing holds them back in addition to financial incentives of Apple and Google. Most people aren't familiar with term "PWA" also why is "installing" a feature who wants to manage these things through their OS which a lot of normies already find confusing. People want plug and play the whole benefit of pwa (seperate window etc) could basically be exposed as per origin setting inside the browser itself and if user want they can pin it to their desktop. Since in my own testing there isn't much difference it terms of API's exposed only lack thereof like no proper user controlled storage retention settings for apis like OPFS and also lack of syncing directly to a user specified folder across all browsers. If they improve these files workflows you will see a lot more robust web apps.
m4chei 5mo ago
First of all: this looks great, and might be exactly what I always wanted. One thing I am missing though, is the ability to search globally throughout all the markdown files. I am pretty bad at organizing my thoughts, so often I find myself globally searching a word to figure out the file I need to navigate to. This is something I really liked in Obsidian.
teppeik 5mo ago
There is also LazyNote. https://about.lazynote.app/ https://about.lazynote.app/
jsdeveloper 5mo ago
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skrtskrt 5mo ago
This will probably get buried but here’s my shot at a feature or extension request: The Daily Note. It’s the only extension I use in Obsidian. I love opening my phone (or on desktop on any platform) and automatically getting a templated note with some of my daily ToDos as a checklist: stretching, exercises, language practice, etc. With a space for adding that day’s one-off ToDos ad priorities. It’s the sole reason I use Obsidian over anything else - and happily pay for the sync service.
sltr 5mo ago
> Chrome is recommended Who recommends Chrome? I don't.
CountGeek 5mo ago
Surprised that https://github.com/fccview/jotty https://github.com/fccview/jotty (ex rwMarkable) has not been mentioned.
ShellYard 5mo ago
[flagged]
gbraad 5mo ago
This is not even close to what obsidian does. It looks more like a simple, zen/focussed editor. Zettelkasten comes closer to organize and link documents, and can be expanded.
creativ0 5mo ago
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perseusai 5mo ago
This is such a simple idea, but really useful. Nice job! I have a project I'm excited to share that's along the same lines.
jekbao 5mo ago
I’m curious what specific problem Files.md aims to solve as an open-source alternative to Obsidian. Since Obsidian already uses open data stored as Markdown of my choice as well as plugins are open-source - my only real pain point is seamless online & offline syncing between my laptop and mobile phone. I’ve tried a few options, including iCloud Drive, but they are not quite reliably as Obsidian’s paid sync service. Would Files.md offer a better sync alternative?

730 points by zakirullin 5mo ago

Seams we had a similar urge recently. I like the simplicity of your approach. Will post a show a little later about my approach to notetaking and LLM integration.

ShivamNayak11 5mo ago

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krthr 5mo ago

I really like the look and feel!

zakirullin 5mo ago
Thanks a lot! I've been perfecting things for 5 years. A week ago I decided to open source it finally :)
- dewey 5mo ago
  That's the comment that made me check it out in more detail, as that sticks out from all the other projects that were built in a weekend in the past months.
  - zakirullin 5mo ago
    Thanks! There's a lot to it, and for years me and my friends were using the project. A lot of us built knowledge bases, and we enjoyed it all quite a bit.
    - snjnlsn 5mo ago
      are you still using the project?
      - zakirullin 5mo ago
        Sure. I can't live without it :) Notes, journal, tasks, projects - everything is in there. Whenever I have a new machine, first thing I do - I open the app =)
        timebeforeland 5mo ago
        Incredible, I will check it out
      - zakirullin 5mo ago
        All the friends that started years ago also use the app to this very day.
- jonotime 5mo ago
  This is neat. I dont get how sync works. Is it server side? Or is there some client side oauth flow? I dont see it.
  - krthr 5mo ago
    [dead]
ctippett 5mo ago
It appeals to me as a minimalistic version of the Bear[1] notes app. A few years ago I played around with copying the Bear app interface for the web, the idea was to create a visually identical mockup of the app so you could immediately visualise changes made when customising various theme values. I stalled with the implementation of the last part, but the rest of it is up at bear.christippett.dev [1] https://bear.app https://bear.app

dilawar 5mo ago

Nice project. People may also want to checkout Tiddlywiki.

blamestross 5mo ago
Gods I love and loath Tiddlywiki. It has some of the most convoluted javascript written before javascript ever actually got all the features that made javascript convoluted. But it did the job!
swed420 5mo ago
> People may also want to checkout Tiddlywiki. Also Zettlr
- alwillis 5mo ago
  > Tiddlywiki Love Tiddlywiki. It's amazing the amount of functionality it has, even if you use it in "one html file" mode. Great for making a web garden [1]. [1]: https://nesslabs.com/digital-garden-tiddlywiki https://nesslabs.com/digital-garden-tiddlywiki
GCUMstlyHarmls 5mo ago
I ended up landing on https://silverbullet.md https://silverbullet.md. It checks a lot of boxes for me, - self hosted - works offline (mostly) - "just md" BUT - scriptable or extendable by lua, rendered in page, eg `${1 + 1}` outputs `2`, but you can do a lot more, such as query pages and tags with a LINQ type query interface.
- nichos 5mo ago
  And the Dev has been awesome. Very active project.
Fogest 5mo ago
I've been using TrilliumNext (fork of Trillium project that is archived) and haven't been able to find an alternative I liked more. Only thing I don't really like is that it's not really stored in Markdown and since you have the ability to have notes in multiple trees it can get a bit messy when trying to move to other systems. I tried moving to Obsidian Notes and found myself missing Trillium. It's nice to be able to just open the web browser and have access to your own self-hosted notes with an editor anywhere. You also can set it up so if you add a sharing tag to a note you can easily share a link to the note. I believe Obsidian allows similar but only if you pay, and it's also not self-hosted. I've tried a wiki style approach before like Tiddlywiki, but I feel like it is a whole different concept of taking and making notes that often is a bit more cumbersome, but maybe it works better with how some people think.

armsaw 5mo ago

Is there a way to follow inline links from a mobile device? Doesn’t seem to work for me in mobile Safari.

zakirullin 5mo ago
It is not very well tested on mobiles yet. People use chatbot on the mobiles - way more convenient. You can both read/write notes through the chat.

zakirullin 5mo ago

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.

pspeter3 5mo ago
What makes Golang a great fit in your opinion?
- zakirullin 5mo ago
  Server setup before the rewrite: docker + php-fpm + php7 + larvel + nginx + redis + cron + worker + certbot Server after the rewrite to Golang: server, a 15MB no-dependencies binary that has everything.
  - lioeters 5mo ago
    That's brilliant. Can't beat the convenience of a single-file executable!
  - LinuxAmbulance 5mo ago
    That is a pretty strong argument for Go!
    - backscratches 5mo ago
      This is the reason I like go and rust so much
  - voidnap 5mo ago
    Using Go means you are forgoing Docker...? Ok. Also if you don't need certbot anymore is your service managing its own ssl certs with letsencrypt? Isn't it generally easier to configure with a reverse proxy like nginx or caddy and terminate SSL at the edge? That's literally caddy's whole thing that it does SSL for you so that it doesn't concern your application.

qitz 5mo ago

Nice Project, I really like the look!

zakirullin 5mo ago
Thanks! I am glad you enjoyed it. For the past week alone, I made 500+ commits, fixing all sorts of UI/UX fixes to perfect things out. I believe I put too much time into it during all those years, but I don't regret it. Because I use the project on daily basis.

himata4113 5mo ago

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.

zakirullin 5mo ago
That was the reason a few years ago I started this project. It seems like software in AI-era should be distributed open source. So that anyone could tweak it however he wants. Not though clunky plugins system.
- philipallstar 5mo ago
  > It seems like software in AI-era should be distributed open source. That makes it easy for AI to be trained on it.
  - theultdev 5mo ago
    Yeah, also makes it easy for humans to train on it. That's the point of open source, sharing the knowledge. We'll all make the same shit over and over if noone shares. But if we all share, then the only thing left to make is the unknown.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - philipallstar 5mo ago
      That doesn't explain why particularly in the AI era software should be easily accessible. All that stuff you said isn't relevant as it applies in the pre-AI era as well.
      - theultdev 5mo ago
        If anything it matters more. I want both myself and my AI agents to have as much knowledge as possible. Sharing is always better.

ocimbote 5mo ago

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!

solarkraft 5mo ago
> When I read "an alternative", I assumed feature-parity and API compatibility When I read “alternative” I immediately had a rant in my head about people calling things alternatives that are not.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
zakirullin 5mo ago
> When I read "an alternative", I assumed feature-parity and API compatibility. But what I found out was entirely different and much more interesting. Thanks for a good observation! Indeed, I don't position it as Obsidian alternative. I don't know a better pitch for it just yet. For me that's something about: simplicity, lazy flow of adding things, readiness to use out of the box. To focus on what works, and not what is fancy.
- jedimastert 5mo ago
  I would say "open source markdown knowledge-base similar to Obsidian" but I'm not a marketing guy
  - bastijn 5mo ago
    Your markdown notes without the circus. The boringly simple knowledge base.
5mo ago

amai 5mo ago

I'm missing export in https://textbundle.org/ https://textbundle.org/ format. "TextBundle brings convenience back - by bundling the Markdown text and all referenced images into a single file."

gonzalohm 5mo ago
If you want to bundle your images in markdown why don't you just use an HTML section with the image encoded as base64 data?
- amai 5mo ago
  Why does every webpage not encode its images as base64 data?
  - gonzalohm 5mo ago
    Because web browsers support hyperlinking there is no need to embed everything into one big html file
    - amai 5mo ago
      And markdown does also support hyperlinks, like HTML. So it makes sense to use that feature.
      - gonzalohm 5mo ago
        But the comment above asked for support for a feature that allows to embed images inside markdown, hence my reply
  - deafpolygon 5mo ago
    load times… much easier to deliver a small html page quickly, then allow progressive downloads on images.

trvz 5mo ago

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.

arthurofbabylon 5mo ago
Scope out minimal.app (or minimal.app/#beta for anyone who wants to contribute to the roadmap). Opinionated, native-only, extremely focused.

riffruff24 5mo ago

another one in the same space: https://helixnotes.com/ https://helixnotes.com/

skrobul 5mo ago
Thank you! I am long time obsidian user looking for something that will work decently on Android and this looks promising. I only really struggle with one basic feature - I want to be able to write note within 1-2 seconds of clicking the app icon. Obsidian makes it 10-15 seconds at best. The HelixNotes sometimes can get this in under 10, still looking for better options.
- duskdozer 5mo ago
  I'm having the same issue with Standard Notes. It's almost 30 seconds now and becoming an issue, especially with Android's aggressive memory freeing. It wasn't so bad early on but it gets worse as notes accumulate.
swah 5mo ago
Is this related to https://helix-editor.com/ https://helix-editor.com/ ??
- benatkin 5mo ago
  AFAICT no. It's similar to Hermes Agent and the Hermes JavaScript engine. They are two very different things. Though you could argue that both Helix projects are editors but I don't think that's meaningful in this instance.
- backscratches 5mo ago
  No, its a really ignorant name collision. And the helix text editor is much better.
lucius_verus 5mo ago
I'm really glad you mentioned this --- I've been looking for a Rust or Tauri-based Obsidian replacement for years, and this is almost everything I want (and much closer to what I want than Files.md). Now that I'm playing with it, I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more traction on HN or Reddit.

nielsbjerg 5mo ago

There's also https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/

backscratches 5mo ago

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.

Galanwe 5mo ago
Right, but most people want to be able to consult their notes on the go, quickly add items from their phone, etc.
- backscratches 5mo ago
  I do too. The setup I've described is best for big screen work when I need tools that dont compromise in any way.
- saint_yossarian 5mo ago
  To be fair you can just keep using Obsidian or similar apps on your phone for this, along with an external sync solution like Syncthing. I tried it for a bit in the past, the main friction is apps formatting Markdown slightly differently (indents, blank lines).
  - backscratches 5mo ago

coreyh14444 5mo ago

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!

RivoLink 5mo ago

Same idea, but directly inside your terminal: https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf

zethsg 5mo ago
This is perfect! thanks for sharing it
- RivoLink 5mo ago
  Glad it helped you.
backscratches 5mo ago
I use tree-md for same end when I want to see my markdown a bit prettier https://github.com/Epistates/treemd https://github.com/Epistates/treemd
- RivoLink 5mo ago
  It’s interesting too. Thanks!

dodyg 5mo ago

Or just use LogSeq https://discuss.logseq.com/t/whats-new-with-logseq-db-may-16th-2026/35020 https://discuss.logseq.com/t/whats-new-with-logseq-db-may-16...

Fogest 5mo ago
That markdown mirror is a pretty neat feature. I've been using Trillium for my notes and the way they save/store the notes is actually one of the things I dislike about it even though I love the application itself. I tried at one point exporting everything to markdown and it worked... but Trillium allows you to have notes in multiple places but they exist essentially as just a pointer in the backend to that note. So it made the export a bit wonky as some instances of a note are just an empty shell and don't have the actual contents. So you have to try and move notes around to get their markdown files in the right places. I've ended up still sticking with Trilium however as I like being able to have notes in multiple locations like this.
- xstas1 5mo ago
  This markdown mirror is a partial solution to a problem that does not exist in "normal" Logseq (what's being rebranded to Logseq OG). The markdown files ARE the data (which syncs beautifully over Dropbox and the like.)
xstas1 5mo ago
I am a Logseq user and I was under the impression that development had stalled or better, stabilized (frankly, most software does NOT need a constant stream of updates). Based on this post, it looks like they're back - and they've chugged some vibe juice.

takethebus 5mo ago

nice, going to point my hermes agent to this instead of obsidian

tinyhouse 5mo ago

Looks nice but seems overkill to me to run a Go server to sync with a telegram bot to authenticate. Maybe I don't fully understand the use case.

zakirullin 5mo ago
You'll right on this - I'll cover this in great detail. You don't need to spin up the server, only in case you want your own infra. Optional sync is only working with chatbot auth for now, but I'll do something about it.
zakirullin 5mo ago
I added a table with all possible setup options: https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md#ways-to-use-it https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md#ways-to-use-it

parweb 5mo ago

[flagged]

jedimastert 5mo ago

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.

alwillis 5mo ago
> waffling about moving from Notion to something local/markdown based for a while. Check out Tolaria [1]. Open source, works locally, uses markdown, no-databases. Git client built-in. Even has Notion-style input. [1]: https://tolaria.md https://tolaria.md
- NetOpWibby 5mo ago
  This looks REALLY good, thanks.
  - alwillis 5mo ago
    Most other note taking apps haven’t worked for me… but Tolaria fits like a glove.
    - NetOpWibby 5mo ago
      I'm hoping Tolaria will do the same for me. It's been a journey!

calebm 5mo ago

I love the simplicity.

zakirullin 5mo ago
Thanks! That's what I was striving for :) Simplicity started from the domain name.

FailMore 5mo ago

1) Very nice implementation 2) Very nice domain! Did you always own "files.md"? 3) Re storing things on your server, what is the security layer around that? I have been building a slightly different solution to the same problem. So far I’m pretty happy with the results and I have enough returning users that I think others are too (https://sdocs.dev/analytics https://sdocs.dev/analytics). I’ve built SmallDocs (https://sdocs.dev https://sdocs.dev; Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777633). SDocs is cli (`sdoc file.md`) -> instantly rendered Markdown file in the browser When you install the cli it gives you the option to add a note in your base agent file (`~/.claude/CLAUDE.md`, etc.). This means every agent chat knows about SDocs and you can say “sdoc me the plan when you’re done with it” and the file will pop open instead of you having to find that terminal session to know it’s done. Going browser first means you’re not required to install anything to get a great experience. Despite being in the browser, the content of SDocs rendered Markdown files remain entirely local to you. SDoc urls contain your markdown document's content in compressed base64 in the url fragment (the bit after the `#`): https://sdocs.dev/#md=GzcFAMT...(this https://sdocs.dev/#md=GzcFAMT...(this is the contents of your document)... The url fragment is never sent to the server (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/F https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/F...: "The fragment is not sent to the server when the URI is requested; it is processed by the client"). The sdocs.dev webapp is purely a client side decoding and rendering engine for the content stored in the url fragment. This also means you can share your .md files privately by sharing the url. I've enjoyed exploiting the HTML rendering side of things which is possible by displaying Markdown in a browser. I’ve added tagged code blocks that the agent is given documentation on how to use. Eg ```chart or ```mermaid (for mermaid diagrams). These then become interactive elements on the page (mermaid is best example of this currently). See live renderings of these options here - charts gallery: https://sdocs.dev/s/yO3WbxFf#k=arcDBnizla5n437VFAeiQcwlu8kh_WexPGdSz2tA5u0 https://sdocs.dev/s/yO3WbxFf#k=arcDBnizla5n437VFAeiQcwlu8kh_..., diagrams gallery: https://sdocs.dev/s/B_Ux11DV#k=KsvheEkiBFai6acnoIJnrOdfVRS5utc7diEw4xly2GY https://sdocs.dev/s/B_Ux11DV#k=KsvheEkiBFai6acnoIJnrOdfVRS5u...

zakirullin 5mo ago
> Very nice domain! Did you always own "files.md"? Thanks! I bought it about 3 years ago. Back then, the project was just a chatbot. But already back then, I kind of had an idea where I want it all to go. I wanted the simplicity (and 0 cognitive load!) to start right from the domain name! Files in .md - files.md! > Re storing things on your server, what is the security layer around that? For the most part I use the project from my Telegram bot. And due to that, it is not possible to do proper E2E. Will see if people use the chatbot, if not, we can consider E2E.

conqrr 5mo ago

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.

zakirullin 5mo ago
Thanks for your warm words! > I'm gonna try Files.md for some inspiration on what I could be missing For the most part I was thinking more about what I can remove :D This inspires me. What kind of minimal feature set does one need to improve his thinking...

gigatree 5mo ago

Big fan of the note up front about how long they’ve been working on it, feel like we’ll be seeing a lot more of that as an anti-slop signal

zakirullin 5mo ago
Thanks. Even though there's "LICENSE.md 3 years ago" file, today I also added this text :) This is hand crafted, for the most part.

prepend 5mo ago

This is neat, but I need a non-server-side program for this. I want everything local and running for the next 20+ years.

zakirullin 5mo ago
You can just clone and use offline. Just open web/index.html file, it absolutely requires no server. If you want a local server though, it is easy to setup: https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md/blob/main/docs/your-own-server.md https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md/blob/main/docs/your-o...
bricej13 5mo ago
TiddlyWiki? https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/
- CGamesPlay 5mo ago
  Which has been around for 22 years now!
gbro3n 5mo ago
This is why I built https://www.asnotes.io https://www.asnotes.io - It's an extension for VS Code. I needed obsidian but usable on corporate networks that don't allow Obsidian or other pkms apps. It's designed to be version control friendly so no sync server is needed either (just use Git)
t_mahmood 5mo ago
Self-plug, I'm working on one, local, native, no web based ui, and minimalist. And it has no external dependency. The data is stored as simple text file, and the format is easily searchable with *nix tools. Not going to be open source or free though, with 2 year perpetual license. I wonder how much that would interest you? My target is people who wants todo.txt like simplicity, but few useful bits. Only for Linux and Windows for now.
backscratches 5mo ago
I recommend the helix text editor with the markdown-oxide LSP (and rumdl formatter if you feel fancy). All open source and even if you never update them they will work forever.

theanonymousone 5mo ago

Thank you for actually acquiring the .md domain corresponding to your software and avoiding some security holesof the future :)

zakirullin 5mo ago
I bought this domain with the promise that one day I'll release my pet-project. So did I, 3 years later :)

samuell 5mo ago

I want something like this, but completely terminal based

axelav 5mo ago
nvim + markdown oxide is the closest I've found https://github.com/Feel-ix-343/markdown-oxide https://github.com/Feel-ix-343/markdown-oxide
- backscratches 5mo ago
  Works so well
RivoLink 5mo ago
Maybe leaf : https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf
tasuki 5mo ago
I use vimwiki. I know vim and appreciate not having to learn a new thing. The output is just markdown files linking to each other, so it's very portable.
backscratches 5mo ago
Like other commenter referenced, the markdown-oxide LSP replicates the core of obsidian better than obsidian does. I use it with helix. I described by setup in more detail above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180639

Kovah 5mo ago

> 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.

KetoManx64 5mo ago
That's why Obsidian is as popular as it is. It starts with a foundation of features that are necessary, and then lets you add/create extensions to expand it as your creativity desires. That line above is just an attempt to convince the user that the lack of features/extensibility is a positive thing.

jklinger410 5mo ago

Only works in Chrome!

zakirullin 5mo ago
You can use any browser. But Local File System API has limited support in other browsers.

rahilb 5mo ago

Lots of Markdown enthusiasts in the thread... if you want to sync your markdown tasks to Reminders.app please pay me some money for the privilege: https://turquoisehexagon.co.uk/remindersync https://turquoisehexagon.co.uk/remindersync or just vibe your own solution :)

nodeflare 5mo ago

Markdown-first tools always end up reinventing each other.

jlos 5mo ago

So you saw a product that (1) gives you complete control of your data (2) uses an open format (3) only charges for sync, publish, and commercial use, and you thought to yourself: "What a great use of my time building a competitor that adds no value, just to save a few dollars a month on sync and publishing. I hope other people value their time as little as I do and contribute" Have fun!

bachmeier 5mo ago
But Obsidian doesn't even require a few dollars a month for sync. You can use Github or whatever sync service you want. Your data is just a directory of markdown files. That said, I've paid for the sync service for years, but only because it works really well on Linux. I've always been impressed with Obsidian's first-class Linux offerings.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
yawnxyz 5mo ago
it's nice to have open source implementations so you can extend / borrow / merge / morph features and ideas into something else
duskdozer 5mo ago
I often find irritations in programs that are either too low-priority or too idiosyncratic to end up getting changed by the owners/maintainers, so having easy access to the source is a huge plus for me, regardless of the product cost.

smokel 5mo ago

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 :)

jatora 5mo ago
I too have vibe-coded my own personal obsidian/sublime replacement in rust, and also ran into WYSIWYG table editing and rendering issues with opus 4.7. Took a couple iterations but now formulas/rendering are perfect. GPT5.5 actually handled that very well compared to 4.7
- manny_rat 5mo ago
  I would love to hear more about this, did you use a GUI library? Does it perform well?
  - smokel 5mo ago
    Not the one you're replying to, but "my" system is an Angular application that makes heavy use of CodeMirror. One instance for the base editor, and one instance for the currently active cell. The other cells are rendered to HTML through a different code path (no CodeMirror involved there). For rendering mathematical formulas it uses MathJax. A global context-based keyboard handler such as the one in VSCode allows for Emacs key bindings.
    - bwat49 5mo ago
      I've vibe coded a codemirror table editor (as a plugin for joplin) using a nested codemirror instance for the cell editor, in my case using joplin's built in command to render markup for the inactive cells: https://github.com/bwat47/joplin-rich-tables https://github.com/bwat47/joplin-rich-tables it works well but I'm not much of a programmer and probably ended up with a crazy over engineered architecture lol I was surprised that there weren't any existing libraries for this (there is one now but it was created after I started work on my plugin: https://github.com/ckant/codemirror-markdown-tables https://github.com/ckant/codemirror-markdown-tables)

RHab 5mo ago

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 https://github.com/HabermannR/Nexidion

nave94hn 5mo ago

[dead]

roland35 5mo ago

[dead]

UnnoTed 5mo ago

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 https://i.imgur.com/ro9Zq9w.png [1]: https://i.imgur.com/pbJcTQF.gif https://i.imgur.com/pbJcTQF.gif

phalangion 5mo ago
If AI’m building isn’t a typo, I kinda like it as a way to accurately claim what I’m building with AI.
- mannanj 5mo ago
  Same here. I might want to use this. Would be interesting to AI build a way to see how phrases and ways of speaking like this spread, and track where the original idea could have originated and morphed and how networks spread like this.
- UnnoTed 5mo ago
  You AI't wrong, just a wordplay to inform about the help of AI.
  - canadiantim 5mo ago
    You’re AIright
    - KingMob 5mo ago
      "AIright, AIright, AIright!" - Matthew McConnAIhey
- skybrian 5mo ago

obsidianbases1 5mo ago

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.

Ifkaluva 5mo ago

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.

zakirullin 5mo ago
Thanks! I've been growing my knowledge base for many years, with great results. And you really need all that much to start taking notes. No techniques, no workflows, just the the simplest setup would do. "Second Brain", however, brings excitement to people's minds. But in reality it just doesn't work. It makes great sales, though.
bityard 5mo ago
Well, we know that it's impossible to remember everything. Humans are absolutely terrible at accurately recalling things that they observed even a few minutes in the past. But we also can't remember nothing and just dump _everything_ into the second brain, otherwise we'd have no map, no context, no way to even know how to look for what we need in the moment. It would be like taking a random teenager off the street, handing them an electronics engineering textbook, and asking them to build a power supply on the spot. So there is definitely a spectrum. Everyone seems to disagree on the optimal point on the spectrum and that is almost certainly because it varies greatly from person to person. My personal experience has been that simply writing extremely detailed notes in the first place makes the information "sticky" in my brain, and greatly increases the likelihood that I won't even _need_ to directly reference the notes in the future. Fun little catch-22 there.
- dcuthbertson 5mo ago
  > Well, we know that it's impossible to remember everything. Yet it's possible to remember a lot. Those who pass "The Knowledge" test are truly inspirational. See this 60 Minutes report on London's Black Cab drivers [0] [0]: https://60minutestonight.com/the-knowledge-60-minutes-reports-on-londons-legendary-black-cab-tradition/ https://60minutestonight.com/the-knowledge-60-minutes-report...

sn0n 5mo ago

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.

ivanjermakov 5mo ago

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.

deafpolygon 5mo ago
Isn’t that a text editor?
- ivanjermakov 5mo ago
  You can both edit text files directly in server or edit them via the web view from any device.

pgwalsh 5mo ago

A docker release would be great. Looks like a more modern version of ManyNotes.

zakirullin 5mo ago
Hm. I thought that there's one single binary + one script to deploy, so Docker is not needed...

bityard 5mo ago

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.

teppeik 5mo ago
> 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. I found this to be similar to my own opinion. So, what tools are you currently using? I'm interested to hear about it.

helterskelter 5mo ago

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)

zakirullin 5mo ago
Thanks! I love being honest. Notes alone wouldn't do.

getoffside 5mo ago

[dead]

insane_dreamer 5mo ago

Looks nice! Doesn't work in Safari though, which is a non-starter for me.

zakirullin 5mo ago
In Safari it should work in OPFS. Because Safari still doesn't support Local FileSystem API :(

levmiseri 5mo ago

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.

a-arbabian 5mo ago
Not very classy to piggy back off of this post to advertise your own text editor. Just make a new "Show HN" post.
- levmiseri 5mo ago
  You are right, I removed it.

gamander2 5mo ago

[dead]

zakirullin 5mo ago
Once they'll support Local FileSystem API!

xiaoyu2006 5mo ago

Why will I want to feed my life into LLM

ryanhecht 5mo ago
In my case, it helps improve my ADHD-affected executive function. It lowers the barrier to entry to ingesting information into a system I know I can extract it from later. It gives me peace of mind to know I can ramble semi-coherently at the speed of conversation and know that the salient points are being captured. Local models will continue to improve, if your concern is privacy -- already they do a decent enough job at interacting with a well-schema'd PKM

gaws 5mo ago

Let us know when this isn't a Chrome-specific tool.

zakirullin 5mo ago
As soon as all major browsers support Local FileSystem API :)

jwillmer 5mo ago

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. [1]: https://github.com/jwillmer/ai-status https://github.com/jwillmer/ai-status

Mobius01 5mo ago

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.

denisdev1 5mo ago

I liked it, will try. Good job

desireco42 5mo ago

As a user of Obsidian I like this, it looks good and clean. I use Typora often as it is easier to start in a folder and just work on the files, on top it has nice visuals. Very good work.

zakirullin 5mo ago
Thanks for your warm words! I did a lot of experimentations with the UX/UI and colors, glad you appreciated the effort :)

zakirullin 5mo ago

Maybe the app should be available at files.md? Not under app.files.md? What do you think?

GlitchRider47 5mo ago
Idk it's pretty common practice to have your landing page at the base url, with the app itself located on a subdomain. Off the top of my head I think of standardnotes, linkwarden, raindrop.
alfirous 5mo ago
It can work. Check https://kraa.io/ https://kraa.io/, you can write immediately even without login.

thr1owaway9621 5mo ago

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.

bel8 5mo ago
AI will have to be very reliable, fast and free to replace md files with HTML. Because I often dump text into md files and the operation is instant. Same for small tweaks.
al_borland 5mo ago
For me, a key tenant of any good note taking system is low friction. Leaning on an LLM feels like significant friction. Formatting something into HTML manually also feels like a lot of fiction. Individual HTML files for notes would also be a friction filled experience for opening and browsing, without some kind of template to allow for navigation of the notes within the browser. This ends up turning into a local wiki very quickly.
- ramoz 5mo ago
  I was about to comment: "HTML creates too much friction after doing all sorts of visual explainers" ... thanks for articulating it well. As a layer of abstraction, it also creates more requirements: need a browser, likely need includes/cdn libs to avoid bloat, all sorts of other things. Markdown is consumable, diffable, shareable in raw form - and you can add enrichment layers on top without much effort.

Igor_Wiwi 5mo ago

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 https://mdview.io which handles large diagrams/tables much better than typical note apps

keithnz 5mo ago
I have a simple script that previews md pages as html and hosts a liveserver so it dynamically updates, renders mermaid / syntax highlighting etc. Super useful when working with an agent when planning out a piece of software. Page dynamically updates as you go, and super useful to have diagrams visible. I'm prompting a lot more to get diagrams included as part of the planning stage (or whenever).

Myzel394 5mo ago

Does in support plugins?

baconhigh 5mo ago

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.

thebeardisred 5mo ago

What is this providing over similarly Markdown based open source note taking applications like Joplin? (https://joplinapp.org/ 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.

andrescordova 5mo ago

Joplin?

xezpeleta 5mo ago

I've also tried something similar: https://xezpeleta.github.io/Idaztian/ https://xezpeleta.github.io/Idaztian/ Definitely not easy to replicate Obsidian UX.

vadepaysa 5mo ago

ah well, you know, obsidian is a bit of a muscle memory now. I have tried to replace it many times with no success. I will try this one too.

tsurba 5mo ago

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.

desireco42 5mo ago
I stopped using Dropbox, but this is pleasant news that they have this much space. I use git and it works well and gives me security my notes will not dissapear. On mobile used to be more difficult so I used specialized app before but now Obsidian git works well enough. It can be better but overall it works well enough for me. I would dictate things to my phone in daily note and later process those more in desktop.
chr15m 5mo ago
It saves to sqlite though, not markdown files you can edit on disk.
- thingortwo 5mo ago
  Why is that a problem if you are already going to be using specific software to interface with your notes don't you want it stored in an optimized foolproof format that is also one the preferred format recommended by library of congress? And if you want always direct edit access and do it often why not then a simple plain text since either way you will be dependent on the software if you like the additional features it offers which aren't inside .md like linking and other
  - Macha 5mo ago
    You can use standard markdown links in obsidian, and even wikilinks are often supported (e.g. pulldown-cmark supports them). Or you can configure obsidian to prefer standard markdown links (https://obsidian.md/help/settings#Use%20Wikilinks https://obsidian.md/help/settings#Use%20Wikilinks) My notes were _already_ a folder of markdown, so I pretty seamlessly moved from VS Code as my notes app to obsidian and could move back to a text editor if obsidian turns evil. This might be part of why I’m less enthusiastic about their canvas thing, but then I was never a mind map or scrap board person anyway.

dakolli 5mo ago

Off topic, but telegram bot integration for tools/projects is very under rated. I try to incorporate telegram bots for all my personal projects. There's almost always a great quality of life feature opportunities that require minimal effort to implement. I particularly like having a tg bots for observability, certain errors and certain events will get sent to a dedicated bot for my project. Highly recommend.

humanfromearth9 5mo ago

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.

michahell 5mo ago

no files sent to the server…telegram chatbot? ok

zakirullin 5mo ago
That's totally optional, and not enabled by default.

rbbydotdev 5mo ago

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: https://github.com/rbbydotdev/opal https://github.com/rbbydotdev/opal

henry_kang 5mo ago

[flagged]

neucoas 5mo ago

Throwing SSL error here

riffic 5mo ago
that's still the case according to SSL Labs: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=app.files.md https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=app.files.md
zakirullin 5mo ago
Fixed.

throwatdem12311 5mo ago

I don’t understand these apps. Zed and VSCode can both render markdown. What am I missing?

system2 5mo ago
They are not note-taking apps. They can't link notes to each other. They are heavy. I personally do not know anyone using VS Code for note-taking.
- throwatdem12311 5mo ago
  Can’t you just link markdown files together with regular hyperlinks? Claude Code is my “note taking app” these days and it does a great job organizing and linking my markdown notes together, and I just open the folder in Zed and render the markdown if I need it.
  - system2 5mo ago
    You will regret when claude decides to wipe all your notes in the name of organization.

sbinnee 5mo ago

The chat interface is an interesting take. With AI assistants in full swing, it now looks viable.

xhevahir 5mo ago

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.

anotherevan 5mo ago

QOwnNotes is a similar project in this domain. https://www.qownnotes.org/ https://www.qownnotes.org/ (Note: The NextCloud integration is entirely optional, I've never used it. The front page makes it sound like a requirement.)

isaisabella 5mo ago

Seems like what Obsidian is like initially. Hope this won't be another Obsidian in the future.

dhruv3006 5mo ago

I too built something similar but as an API Client - https://voiden.md/ https://voiden.md/ - Obsidian really picking up !

jzer0cool 5mo ago

self-hosted sync - is only local networked devices syncs all over internet?

ivolimmen 5mo ago

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.

tomburgs 5mo ago

One strength of Obsidian is actually it's plugins. All of the plugins are fully open source so I think if someone truly plans to disrupt it they should make their editor interoperable with Obsidian plugins. It's a bit strange to me that in 2026 where code is allegedly "free" we're still building these web apps that pretend to be desktop apps. In part I understand it, and logically a PWA must be better than electron for the most part (takes up less space, doesn't install another browser on my computer) yet I cannot see myself installing a PWA on my Mac. I feel like in general I've come to the point in my life where if a desktop app is not native I am not installing it (apps that I NEED to have for one reason or another are excluded, but I'll still grunt)

thingortwo 5mo ago
Most people actually just prefer convenience with web apps you just instantly go to a domain and can check it out also secure and sandboxed by default since I don't have to worry what they are doing in other parts of my system which is a big worry with current supply chain attacks and what not. Their "PWA" marketing holds them back in addition to financial incentives of Apple and Google. Most people aren't familiar with term "PWA" also why is "installing" a feature who wants to manage these things through their OS which a lot of normies already find confusing. People want plug and play the whole benefit of pwa (seperate window etc) could basically be exposed as per origin setting inside the browser itself and if user want they can pin it to their desktop. Since in my own testing there isn't much difference it terms of API's exposed only lack thereof like no proper user controlled storage retention settings for apis like OPFS and also lack of syncing directly to a user specified folder across all browsers. If they improve these files workflows you will see a lot more robust web apps.

m4chei 5mo ago

First of all: this looks great, and might be exactly what I always wanted. One thing I am missing though, is the ability to search globally throughout all the markdown files. I am pretty bad at organizing my thoughts, so often I find myself globally searching a word to figure out the file I need to navigate to. This is something I really liked in Obsidian.

teppeik 5mo ago

There is also LazyNote. https://about.lazynote.app/ https://about.lazynote.app/

jsdeveloper 5mo ago

[dead]

skrtskrt 5mo ago

This will probably get buried but here’s my shot at a feature or extension request: The Daily Note. It’s the only extension I use in Obsidian. I love opening my phone (or on desktop on any platform) and automatically getting a templated note with some of my daily ToDos as a checklist: stretching, exercises, language practice, etc. With a space for adding that day’s one-off ToDos ad priorities. It’s the sole reason I use Obsidian over anything else - and happily pay for the sync service.

sltr 5mo ago

> Chrome is recommended Who recommends Chrome? I don't.

CountGeek 5mo ago

Surprised that https://github.com/fccview/jotty https://github.com/fccview/jotty (ex rwMarkable) has not been mentioned.

ShellYard 5mo ago

[flagged]

gbraad 5mo ago

This is not even close to what obsidian does. It looks more like a simple, zen/focussed editor. Zettelkasten comes closer to organize and link documents, and can be expanded.

creativ0 5mo ago

[dead]

perseusai 5mo ago

This is such a simple idea, but really useful. Nice job! I have a project I'm excited to share that's along the same lines.

jekbao 5mo ago

I’m curious what specific problem Files.md aims to solve as an open-source alternative to Obsidian. Since Obsidian already uses open data stored as Markdown of my choice as well as plugins are open-source - my only real pain point is seamless online & offline syncing between my laptop and mobile phone. I’ve tried a few options, including iCloud Drive, but they are not quite reliably as Obsidian’s paid sync service. Would Files.md offer a better sync alternative?