# obsidian: coverage

> what the discourse made of obsidian — the darling phase, the canonization, and the critiques.

## coverage

- 2020-05-27 — [show hn: obsidian](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598) (hacker news, erica xu) — positive. 'a knowledge base that works on local markdown files' — local-first, plain text, linking like an ide. the launch pitch and the whole product thesis in one sentence, while roam was still hot. traction: ~1,087 points, 477 comments — the third-biggest obsidian thread ever.
- 2020-08-23 — [the perfect note-taking app](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wpcVQeF07G4) (youtube, ali abdaal) — positive. the perfect note-taking app taxonomy — obsidian named before the fandom formed. abdaal later publicly preferred apple notes, which makes the early endorsement more honest. traction: 797k views.
- 2020-09-15 — [obsidian for beginners: start here](https://youtube.com/watch?v=QgbLb6QCK88) (youtube — linking your thinking, nick milo) — positive. 'obsidian for beginners: start here' — the video that onboarded a generation of users and founded the linking your thinking media operation. traction: 2.41m views — the single most important onboarding artifact.
- 2021 — [why i chose obsidian over roam](https://notes.nicolevanderhoeven.com/system/cards/Why+I+chose+Obsidian+over+Roam) (fork my brain, nicole van der hoeven) — positive. a roam 'believer' plan buyer and small investor defects publicly — notable for who was writing, not just what.
- 2021 — [how to switch from roam research to obsidian](https://nesslabs.com/roam-to-obsidian) (ness labs, anne-laure le cunff) — positive. the influential migration how-to — roam lock-in as the cautionary contrast that made local markdown feel like freedom.
- 2021-07-12 — [show hn: obsidian for mobile](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27807850) (hacker news, erica xu) — positive. the mobile launch thread — enthusiasm for the app, sustained grumbling about ios sync workarounds and the license. the first big mobile moment. traction: 760 points, 318 comments; #1 product of the day on product hunt.
- 2021-12-22 — [the rise of second-brain apps](https://www.thecut.com/2021/12/second-brain-apps-notion-obsidian.html) (the cut / new york magazine, sophie haigney) — mixed. 'i saw the best minds of my generation being uploaded onto second-brain apps' — the first big mainstream-culture piece to name the category, bemused and generous at once. traction: tiago forte wrote a case study about the piece itself.
- 2022-10-13 — [obsidian 1.0](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33190433) (hacker news) — positive. the 1.0 thread — the community's proof-of-arrival moment, full of users recounting migrations. traction: ~1,329 points, 565 comments.
- 2022-12-20 — [show hn: obsidian canvas](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34066824) (hacker news) — positive. canvas's launch thread — the spatial-canvas feature landed as the most-loved obsidian moment on hn ever. traction: 1,380 points, 387 comments — the highest-scoring obsidian submission identified.
- 2023-10 — [inside the cult of obsidian, the note-taking app with a rabid fan base](https://www.fastcompany.com/91015963/inside-the-cult-of-obsidian-the-note-taking-app-with-a-rabid-fan-base) (fast company, jared newman) — positive. 'the cult of obsidian' — the profile that canonized the community reading. kepano responded 'proudly not a cult,' which only fed the framing. traction: techmeme carry; wonder tools explainer fed it.
- 2022-08-04 — [obsidian review](https://www.techradar.com/reviews/obsidian) (techradar, stefan ionescu) — positive. 'sophisticated features… a stellar user interface' — the trade-press review, priced against the old grid.
- 2024 — [how to use obsidian for writing and productivity](https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-use-obsidian-writing-productivity-markdown/) (wired, justin pot) — positive. 'this application has slowly gone from being a weird app i didn't understand to one i can't imagine functioning without.' wired's practical guide doubled as a conversion story.
- 2025-12-07 — [obsidian review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/obsidian) (pcmag, justin pot) — positive. 4.0/excellent, 'best for power users' — with the cons that define the product: 'difficult to get started with. no collaboration features.'
- 2024-04-24 — [obsidian: the king of learning tools](https://youtube.com/watch?v=hSTy_BInQs8) (youtube, odysseas) — positive. the single biggest obsidian video — a full guide and setup from the study-tube end of youtube. traction: 3.26m views.
- 2024-01-17 — [why i like obsidian](https://www.ddanieltan.com/posts/obsidian/) (ddanieltan.com, daniel tan) — positive. 'the backstage manager of my life' — the love letter whose 368-comment hn thread doubled as a meta-discussion of pkm habits. traction: 293 points, 368 comments on hn.
- 2024 — [how i use obsidian](https://calv.info/how-i-use-obsidian) (calv.info, calvin french-owen) — positive. the segment co-founder's workflow — 'the primary goal of the tool should be eliciting thought… 99% of the time i never re-visit my notes, and that is fine.'
- 2024-02-24 — [karpathy's obsidian endorsement](https://x.com/karpathy) (x, andrej karpathy) — positive. 'the file is the source of truth, not the application' — karpathy endorses the philosophy, not the note-taking. the endorsement obsidian quotes forever. traction: the most-repeated single endorsement obsidian has.
- 2024 — [i've turned into a tech hippie](https://www.fastcompany.com/91156207/how-i-turned-into-a-tech-hippie) (fast company, jared newman) — positive. obsidian as refuge from venture-backed apps — 'a small team that hasn't raised any venture capital' pitched as the feature.
- 2025-08-18 — [obsidian bases](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44945532) (hacker news) — mixed. the bases launch thread — 'notion killer' versus 'scope creep' fought to a draw across 255 comments. traction: 695 points, 255 comments.
- 2025-08-18 — [how the head of obsidian went from superfan to ceo](https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/760522/) (the verge / decoder, casey newton) — positive. the superfan-to-ceo decoder interview — the fullest mainstream account of obsidian's philosophy and business.
- 2026-04-02 — [llm knowledge bases](https://x.com/karpathy/status/2039805659525644595) (x, andrej karpathy) — positive. obsidian cast as the ide/frontend for an llm-compiled markdown wiki — web clipper for ingest, agents for the gardening. the agent-era reframing at maximum reach. traction: 1.2m+ views per analytics drift.
- 2022-01-31 — [notes against note-taking systems](https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/notes-against-note-taking-systems) (sashachapin.substack.com, sasha chapin) — critical. the canonical anti-pkm essay — 'getting lost in your knowledge management system is a fantastic way to avoid creating things.' never names obsidian; defined the counter-genre anyway. traction: spawned a public rebuttal genre.
- 2023-02-03 — [a note on the cargo cult of zettelkasten](https://chrisaldrich.wordpress.com/2023/02/03/a-note-on-the-cargo-cult-of-zettelkasten/) (chrisaldrich.wordpress.com, chris aldrich) — critical. 'a cargo cult of zettelkasten aspirants… may eventually give up, sometimes in shame' — the practioner's warning that the tooling outruns the practice.
- 2023-01-22 — [pkm in retrospect](https://curtismchale.ca/2023/01/22/pkm-in-retrospect-pkm-weekly-jan-22-2023-issue-053/) (pkm weekly, curtis mchale) — mixed. 'roam is out of the picture… people were always dreaming about a tool that did the work' — the pkm weekly postmortem on the whole wave.
- 2023-08-25 — [why note-taking apps don't make us smarter](https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/23845590/) (the verge, david pierce) — mixed. 'the original promise of roam — that it would improve my thinking — fizzled completely' and 'obsidian's brutalist design wore on me' — the verge's own pkm exhaustion piece.
- 2023 — [stop procrastinating with note-taking apps](https://youtube.com/watch?v=baKCC2uTbRc) (youtube, sam matla) — critical. 'stop procrastinating with note-taking apps' — the video-form version of the productivity-porn critique, aimed at the whole category obsidian leads. traction: 533k views.
- 2025 — [over-engineering the mind: the obsidian trap](https://buildfirstbrain.com/journal/over-engineering-the-mind-the-obsidian-trap/) (buildfirstbrain.com, buildfirstbrain) — critical. 'a polished form of procrastination, productivity porn, where optimizing the system substitutes for the hard work' — the obsidian-named version of the chapin argument.
- 2025-10-23 — [be careful with obsidian](https://phong.bearblog.dev/be-careful-with-obsidian/) (phong.bearblog.dev, hữu phong) — critical. the security critique in one post — closed-source, no sandbox, plugins 'reviewed only once and not re-audited on updates,' unsigned dmg. hn split between 'relatively trustworthy' and demands for sandboxing. traction: 127 points, 150 comments on hn.
- 2025 — [a plain folder of markdown files beat notion, obsidian, and apple notes](https://www.xda-developers.com/notion-obsidian-apple-notes-lost-to-plain-folder-of-markdown-files/) (xda, mahnoor faisal) — mixed. 'it's beloved by the open-source community despite not being open-source' — the contradiction stated plainly, as a compliment and an accusation at once.
- 2025-08-27 — [obsidian disabling community plugins](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-disabling-community-plugins/104779) (obsidian forum, obsidian forum) — critical. the team remotely deprecated two plugin versions over a bug-report flood — 'does this really justify interacting with a user's personal plugin config?' the local-first promise meets a remote kill switch.
- 2025-07-05 — [security issue: vibe-coded plugins sent for approval](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/security-issue-vibe-coded-plugins-sent-for-approval-into-community-plugins/102624) (obsidian forum, obsidian forum) — mixed. the ai-generated plugin flood hits the human review queue — a ~300-pr backlog and the governance debate that produced the 2026 automated reviews.
- 2022 — [obsidian publish feels like it should not cost $198 a year](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/obsidian-publish-feels-like-its-still-development-therefore-bob-doto) (linkedin, bob doto) — critical. 'obsidian publish feels like it's still in development and therefore should not cost $198 a year' — the canonical pricing gripe, still cited in alternatives posts four years later. traction: obsidian cut publish pricing in april 2023.
- 2024 — [obsidian vs. notion: which is best?](https://zapier.com/blog/obsidian-vs-notion/) (zapier, zapier) — mixed. 'both are for power users, but notion is more user friendly' — the usability-versus-power framing that defined the mainstream comparison for years.
- 2022-10-15 — [logseq: privacy-first platform for knowledge management](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33218561) (hacker news) — mixed. the open-source rival's big hn thread — 276 points and a comment section that was really about obsidian. traction: 276 points.
- 2022-07-27 — [after obsidian and logseq, i give dendron a try](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32248543) (hacker news) — mixed. the era-typical three-way shootout — obsidian, logseq, dendron — before the field thinned. traction: 129 points, 159 comments.
- 2023-02 — [dendron development stopped?](https://github.com/dendronhq/dendron/discussions/3890) (github, dendron) — mixed. 'we were ultimately not able to find product market fit for a venture backed business' — the vc-funded competitor's end-of-life note became the cautionary exhibit in every obsidian business-model debate.
- 2025-09 — [trying logseq](https://blog.tombert.com/Posts/Technical/2025/09-September/Trying-Logseq) (blog.tombert.com, tombert) — mixed. 'the one complaint i have with obsidian is that it is not open source… i actually pay for the professional license to support the project' — the logseq trial that ends back at obsidian.
- 2026-05-26 — [why i left logseq for obsidian after 2+ years](https://0x5.uk/2026/05/26/why-i-left-logseq-for-obsidian/) (0x5.uk, tim abell) — positive. the reverse migration — calls obsidian 'closed-source freeware' and still switches from logseq for reliability. the comparison genre's most honest entry.
- 2026-05-18 — [show hn: files.md — open-source alternative to obsidian](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48179677) (hacker news) — mixed. an open-source obsidian clone launches at 730 points — out-scoring most obsidian announcements and functioning as a referendum on the closed core. traction: 730 points — more than bases, the cli, or headless sync.
- 2025 — [i ditched obsidian for notebooklm, and i'm so glad i did](https://www.xda-developers.com/ditched-obsidian-for-notebooklm/) (xda, xda) — critical. 'the lack of an integrated ai' as the dealbreaker — the first big departure framed as an ai story, not a notes story.
- 2025 — [i stopped using obsidian after finding this self-hosted notes app](https://www.xda-developers.com/stopped-using-obsidian-after-finding-self-hosted-notes-app/) (xda, xda) — critical. 'i had just built a high-maintenance hobby… i hadn't produced a single original thought' — the departure as confession.
- 2025-05-05 — [ditching obsidian and building my own](https://amberwilliams.io/blogs/building-my-own-pkms) (amberwilliams.io, amber williams) — critical. 'i was surprised at this fee because i thought obsidian was open-source… almost $1,000 if i planned to use obsidian for a decade' — the biggest leaving-obsidian thread ever. traction: 471 points, 559 comments — the largest departure thread identified.
- 2024-10-18 — [i ditched obsidian for this note app and i'm never going back!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ymo_29vh9mY) (youtube, shu omi) — critical. 'i found myself spending so much time constantly tweaking my setup and installing hundreds of plugins' — the highest-reach departure video. traction: 603k views.
- 2023-09-08 — [why are people leaving obsidian for this note app? | capacities review](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wLCENxoCh6g) (youtube, shu omi) — mixed. the video that framed the capacities exodus narrative — obsidian's first credible 'people are leaving' story. traction: 446k views.
- 2026-04 — [claude just killed the note-taking app. here is proof.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=geIKyDaXwGg) (youtube, icor with tom) — critical. 'claude just killed the note-taking app' — the agent-era departure genre: if the ai does the synthesis, the vault is just storage. traction: 473k views — against isenberg's 455k-view pro-vault video in the same season.
- 2026-07-17 — [rebooting my note-taking](https://darcynorman.net/2026/07/17/rebooting-my-note-taking/) (darcynorman.net, d'arcy norman) — critical. 'even that had turned into something of a cargo cult… thousands of notes that i never referred to… i just deleted all of those' — the quiet reboot departure.
- 2025 — [how i organized my life using only apple notes](https://youtube.com/watch?v=IMJSkU3rVNg) (youtube, zach highley) — mixed. the apple-notes counter-current — the biggest 'you don't need obsidian' video of the era. traction: 681k views.

## controversies

- 2020– — closed source, open files: a data-ownership philosophy shipped as a closed-source app. silver's august 2020 forum answer gave the four-point rationale — small team, plugin freedom over sandboxing, and file-format openness as the real lock-in defense — and the argument has never fully closed. reaction: recurring: a popular open-sourcing megathread was auto-hidden by flags in 2022 and restored by staff; an open-source clone's 2026 launch out-scored every obsidian announcement; kepano's hn line — 'file over app is more important than open source' — is the company's settled answer. (sources: [open sourcing of obsidian](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/1515), [my (largely popular) open source thread was hidden](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/my-largely-popular-open-source-thread-was-hidden-and-now-there-isnt-any-way-to-recover-it/39890), [show hn: files.md — open-source alternative to obsidian](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48179677), [100% user-supported](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39336308), [obsidian isn't actually open source — here's the markdown editor that is](https://tech.yahoo.com/articles/obsidian-isnt-actually-open-source-133017499.html))
- 2020– — plugin power without a sandbox: community plugins run with full system access and no sandbox — licat called a secure sandbox 'absolutely' impossible without crippling the api. reviewers saw submissions once at entry; updates were not re-audited until the 2026 automated reviews. reaction: the trust model held socially for years, then met its stress tests: the phantompulse rat campaign in 2026 and the vibe-coded submission flood that forced automated per-version review. (sources: [licat posts](https://forum.obsidian.md/search.json?q=%40Licat), [less is safer: reducing the risk of supply chain attacks](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45307242), [security issue: vibe-coded plugins sent for approval into community plugins](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/security-issue-vibe-coded-plugins-sent-for-approval-into-community-plugins/102624), [the future of obsidian plugins](https://obsidian.md/blog/future-of-plugins/))
- 2021–2023 — the pricing stack: the early service pricing read as premium: publish at $16–20/month per site, sync at $8–10/month, a required $50/user/year commercial license. the doto post made the publish gripe canonical. reaction: the company cut rather than defended: publish repriced to $96/year in april 2023, a $4 sync standard tier arrived in 2024, and the commercial license went optional in 2025. (sources: [obsidian publish feels like it's still in development and therefore should not cost $198 a year](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/obsidian-publish-feels-like-its-still-development-therefore-bob-doto), [obsidian publish standard price](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-publish-standard-price/23851), [obsidian publish now offers more for less](https://obsidian.md/blog/obsidian-publish-now-offers-more-for-less/), [new sync standard plan](https://obsidian.md/blog/standard-plan/), [obsidian is now free for work](https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/))
- 2026-06 — the sync price hike: the june 2026 sync repricing — ~35% annual increase, the 1 gb tier eliminated, no grandfathering — produced the loudest backlash of the service era. reaction: forum and reddit threads accumulated; the fullest write-up (remio.ai) carries ai-embellished statistics, so the backlash is real but its sharpest numbers are unverified. (sources: [obsidian's sync pricing hike triggers community backlash](https://www.remio.ai/post/obsidian-s-sync-pricing-hike-triggers-community-backlash), [obsidian sync storage options](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-sync-storage-options/114840))
- 2021– — ios and icloud: ios friction is the product's oldest wound: icloud-synced vaults hang on 'loading workspace,' and advanced data protection took app load from ~5s to ~45s in user reports. reaction: years of forum threads with workspace-mobile.json surgery as the fix; obsidian's own sync is the sanctioned answer, which reads to critics as the friction monetizing itself. (sources: [ios app extremely slow to load](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/ios-app-extremely-slow-to-load/67031), [ios & icloud slow to start](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/50827), [obsidian ios performance hit after enabling icloud advanced data protection?](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/77712), [ios and icloud: stuck on loading workspace](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/76541))
- 2025-08 — bases and the scope question: bases turned notes into a database — and split the room. 'notion killer' reads alongside 'scope creep': whether a notes app should want to be a database is the vision question of the kepano era. reaction: 695-point hn thread fought to a draw; even favorable coverage called kepano's framing 'a bit too flowery.' the counter-argument: properties shipped in 2023 and the community's dataview had asked for this for years. (sources: [obsidian bases](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44945532), [obsidian bases: transforming notes into dynamic data](https://algustionesa.com/obsidian-bases-transforming-notes-into-dynamic-data/), [after using obsidian bases, i can't see myself going back to notion](https://www.makeuseof.com/obsidian-bases-ditch-notion/), [obsidian's new bases feature is finally replacing notion in my workflow](https://www.xda-developers.com/obsidians-new-bases-feature-replacing-notion-workflow-for-good/))
- 2022– — productivity porn: the productivity-porn critique — the system as procrastination. chapin's essay named the genre, the obsidian trap post named the product, and the departure videos keep finding the same confession: the vault became the hobby. reaction: obsidian's own community absorbed the critique — calv.info's 'i never re-visit my notes, and that is fine' is the genre's best in-house rebuttal. (sources: [notes against note-taking systems](https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/notes-against-note-taking-systems), [over-engineering the mind: the obsidian trap](https://buildfirstbrain.com/journal/over-engineering-the-mind-the-obsidian-trap/), [stop procrastinating with note-taking apps like obsidian, roam, logseq](https://youtube.com/watch?v=baKCC2uTbRc), [how i use obsidian](https://calv.info/how-i-use-obsidian), [a note on the cargo cult of zettelkasten](https://chrisaldrich.wordpress.com/2023/02/03/a-note-on-the-cargo-cult-of-zettelkasten/))
- 2025–2026 — the plugin review queue: the plugin queue as a governance problem: one human reviewer, a ~300-pr backlog, a flood of vibe-coded submissions, and a community divided between open gates and curation. reaction: the 2026 directory relaunch answered it — automated per-version security review and a developer dashboard, and the 2,300-submission backlog cleared. (sources: [security issue: vibe-coded plugins sent for approval into community plugins](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/security-issue-vibe-coded-plugins-sent-for-approval-into-community-plugins/102624), [the future of obsidian plugins](https://obsidian.md/blog/future-of-plugins/), [johannes theiner](https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannes-theiner))
- 2026-04 — phantompulse: phantompulse — a remote-access trojan delivered through a social-engineered shared vault: shell commands and a hider plugin, blockchain c2. a weaponization of the trust model, not a code vulnerability. reaction: 366-point hn thread split between 'this is social engineering, not obsidian's bug' and 'the trust model made this possible.' the company had shipped 'less is safer' supply-chain guidance months earlier. (sources: [obsidian plugin abuse delivers phantompulse rat](https://thehackernews.com/2026/04/obsidian-plugin-abuse-delivers.html), [obsidian plugin was abused to deploy a remote access trojan](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48088576), [phantompulse: blockchain c2 rat via obsidian plugin abuse](https://labs.cloudsecurityalliance.org/research/csa-research-note-phantompulse-rat-obsidian-20260416-csa-sty/), [less is safer: reducing the risk of supply chain attacks](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45307242))
- 2020– — no real-time collaboration: no real-time collaboration — the feature every comparison review lists as a con. sync merges files; it does not put two cursors in one note. reaction: pcmag lists it as the standing con; the local-first answer is that single-writer files are the price of ownership. the open question is whether agents change the math — a machine gardener does not need a second cursor. (sources: [obsidian review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/obsidian), [obsidian vs. notion: which is best?](https://zapier.com/blog/obsidian-vs-notion/), [sync headless docs](https://obsidian.md/help/sync/headless))

## sentiment eras

- 2020 — the roam refugee wave (positive): the show hn hit ~1,087 points while roam still owned the category; the early coverage is migration how-tos written by roam believers and investors defecting publicly. (sources: [show hn: obsidian — a knowledge base that works on local markdown files](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598), [why i chose obsidian over roam](https://notes.nicolevanderhoeven.com/system/cards/Why+I+chose+Obsidian+over+Roam), [how to switch from roam research to obsidian](https://nesslabs.com/roam-to-obsidian))
- 2021–2022 — the community bloom (positive): mobile ships #1 on product hunt, the cut names the second-brain category, obsidian october and gems of the year institutionalize the community — the coverage is onboarding and enthusiasm. (sources: [obsidian for mobile](https://hunted.space/dashboard/obsidian/launches/obsidian-for-mobile), [the rise of second-brain apps: notion, obsidian, mem](https://www.thecut.com/2021/12/second-brain-apps-notion-obsidian.html), [obsidian october 2021](https://obsidian.md/blog/2021-obsidian-october-announcement/))
- 2022–2023 — the canonization (positive): 1.0 and canvas produce the two biggest hn threads (1,329 and 1,380 points); fast company canonizes the 'cult'; kepano's ceo letter and 'file over app' give the coverage its vocabulary. (sources: [obsidian 1.0](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33190433), [show hn: obsidian canvas](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34066824), [why people are obsessed with obsidian, the indie darling of note-taking apps](https://www.fastcompany.com/90960653/why-people-are-obsessed-with-obsidian-the-indie-darling-of-notetaking-apps), [file over app](https://stephango.com/file-over-app))
- 2023–2024 — the skepticism shelf (mixed): the counter-genre matures: chapin's anti-pkm essay, the cargo-cult warning, shu omi's capacities video, dendron's end-of-life as the cautionary exhibit. sentiment stays net-positive with a real critical literature underneath. (sources: [notes against note-taking systems](https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/notes-against-note-taking-systems), [a note on the cargo cult of zettelkasten](https://chrisaldrich.wordpress.com/2023/02/03/a-note-on-the-cargo-cult-of-zettelkasten/), [why are people leaving obsidian for this note app? | capacities review](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wLCENxoCh6g), [dendron development stopped?](https://github.com/dendronhq/dendron/discussions/3890))
- 2025–early 2026 — the tension year (mixed): bases splits the room, the departure genre goes mass-market (notebooklm, plain folders, apple notes), 'be careful with obsidian' makes the security case, and the biggest leaving thread ever runs 559 comments. (sources: [obsidian bases](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44945532), [i ditched obsidian for notebooklm, and i'm so glad i did](https://www.xda-developers.com/ditched-obsidian-for-notebooklm/), [be careful with obsidian](https://phong.bearblog.dev/be-careful-with-obsidian/), [ditching obsidian and building my own](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44022448))
- 2026 — the agent-era reframe (mixed): karpathy's 1.2m-view llm-wiki post recasts the vault as agent infrastructure; the cli and headless sync ship into it; phantompulse and the plugin-directory overhaul fight the security story in the same months. (sources: [llm knowledge bases](https://x.com/karpathy/status/2039805659525644595), [obsidian cli](https://obsidian.md/cli), [obsidian plugin was abused to deploy a remote access trojan](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48088576), [the future of obsidian plugins](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48109970))

AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.

Canonical page: https://hraness.com/obsidian/coverage


Published by @ben in profile revision 1.
Original document: https://hraness.com/obsidian/coverage
Original credited author: Hraness
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.

## Structured source and record data

````json
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````