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Posted by adilmoujahid 5 hours ago

Obsidian Sync now has a headless client(help.obsidian.md)
309 points | 116 comments
corysama 5 hours ago|
Also new: Obsidian joins the CLI gang

https://help.obsidian.md/cli

I’ve been having a lot of fun recently using AI CLIs with Obsidian. No plugins necessary because it’s just a directory tree of markdown files.

mihaelm 4 hours ago||
I love that CLIs are getting a second wind.
AbstractH24 35 minutes ago||
> I love that CLIs are getting a second wind.

I just wish there were more solutions to add simple things like copy and paste to them.

As though they were more a derivative of the text box I type in right now. And less to MS-DOS I grew up with.

Outside of that, agreed. Eliminate GUI as a blocker.

manmal 5 hours ago|||
I've been using iCloud to sync Obsidian, and have consistently run into the problem that iCloud file container access needs full disk permissions that I don't want to give the agent (or Ghostty). Does everybody use Obsidian's paid sync instead or what? Or SyncThing?
rafaquintanilha 2 hours ago|||
Definitely one of the biggest ROI is to pay for the sync. I regret all years I tried git-based alternatives (it's still useful to have it in git for backup, but not as the main syncing mechanism).
kcrwfrd_ 3 hours ago||||
I just pay for the sync.

I like that I can have some vaults that sync to both my personal and work laptops and other vaults that only sync to one or the other.

It’s awfully convenient without any vendor lock in since I can just take my plain markdown files and leave anytime.

vergessenmir 4 hours ago||||
Just pay for the sync. I used to juggle with git, rsync, inotify etc and other tools

Its one of the few subscriptions where it actually feels like money well spent

hombre_fatal 3 hours ago||
I was using SyncThing, and it worked, but any time you have an Obsidian vault open on two devices, or shortly after another, you're always thinking about if you're going to have to clean up a bunch of sync conflict files later. And that mental overhead is not worth saving $4/mo.

The conflicts are never hard: it's like a git merge conflict where you just take the latest of every conflict block.

typicalrunt 5 hours ago||||
I used to use SyncThing, then Dropbox, then iCloud. But then I just caved and paid for Obsidian Sync and it is the best money spent aside from Claude. I don't have to tinker with weird settings anymore or deal with sync issues, it just works.
FloatArtifact 4 hours ago|||
I can't wonder if that's by design to make it hard for a plugin to have it's own sync mechanism. Definitely not proof of this that I know of, but a thought.
wiether 4 hours ago||
Obsidian is plain Markdown and JSON files.

There can't be a will from the devs to make it hard to sync.

It's just that unlike git or Dropbox or whatever, that are just generic "syncing" tools, Obsidian Sync has been built to provide the best experience with Obsidian.

FloatArtifact 3 hours ago||
I'm talking more about the plugin architecture not about the file format or third-party applications. sync plugins seems to be pretty limited compared to what's offered for a subscription.
peterb 4 hours ago|||
Same
mk12 1 hour ago||||
I use Syncthing (with Synctrain client on iOS) and it works great.
369548684892826 1 hour ago||
protip: You can make synctrain sync with an iOS shortcut, with the shortcut being triggered when Obsidian is opened or closed. This means you're always in sync, even if iOS hasn't allowed synctrain to run in the background.
giancarlostoro 3 hours ago||||
I use both and I prefer their builtin sync, since I also code on Linux.
seabrookmx 3 hours ago||||
I've had good luck with syncthing. But I only sync between laptop and desktop.. the mobile story with syncthing isn't ideal.
JimmyBiscuit 1 hour ago||||
Im just running a Nextcloud on a raspberry pi to sync everything. Works flawlessly for multiple years now.
vulkoingim 1 hour ago||||
I used iCloud in the past, but found that syncing between a few devices sometimes left my notes in a weird state - sometimes overwritten, missing, etc. I switched some time ago to https://github.com/remotely-save/remotely-save with backblaze and I periodically sync to a git repo for a second backup. No issues since then.
vorticalbox 2 hours ago||||
I have been using remotely save and a free bucket from backblaze. It as a s3 compatible api so works using the s3 feature.
yard2010 1 hour ago||
I'm doing the same since this is the only method I found I can let my bot access the files, something I couldn't achieve with Obsidian Sync.. until now!
codybontecou 3 hours ago||||
I built a one-time purchase solution that might help you.

- https://isolated.tech/apps/syncmd

- https://isolated.tech/apps/syncmd/blog/obsidian-git-ios-setu...

You can git clone directly to your iOS file system which fixes the Obsidian git plugin issue so you can use the Obsidian git plugin on your computer and mobile devices.

chrisweekly 5 hours ago||||
Obsidian's paid sync works great for me.
brnt 1 hour ago||||
Resilio.
qaq 2 hours ago||||
github private repo works fine
poglet 4 hours ago|||
https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync
etra0 2 hours ago|||
I did run with this setup for a few months (I believe like, 5 months already?) and when it works, it's nice, but 90% of the time it has been extremely painful.

Something breaks, one automatically updates and then it breaks the entire database, SCRAM mode, recovering is painful, and all the time I get warnings, spam and logs, it's anything but seamless.

Which is a real pity, because when it works it feels magical to use within my laptop, my phone and my tablet, all self hosted, but the pain won and so I'm searching for new alternatives.

willis936 3 hours ago|||
I use this and a self-hosted couchdb. So far it seems to be good, but I haven't spent more than a few hours with it yet. I do have what appears to be a working setup on ios, macos, and linux. Obsidian's large number of plugins and control surfaces is a bit hazardous.
jadbox 4 hours ago|||
It's not super useful yet- you can't really view notes in the CLI but you can can trigger features like search.
WNWceAJ9R9Ezc4 4 hours ago|||
Notes are stored in Markdown files. Why do you need Obsidian CLI to view notes when `cat` will do?
goodmythical 3 hours ago|||
Okay, so my command line fu is not what it perhaps should be, but if I could use obsidian without the bloated app, I'd be even more in love.

How would I be able to search obsidian links from the command line?

Like, to travel between notes in the app of course I can just click on connecting links or search, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to do that in a cli.

Is there some handy way to search the current folder and subfolders for text in a file with regex? Like some kind of >find term for all of my [[term]] entries in markdown files ?

toddmorey 3 hours ago|||
What is obsidian beyond a pile of markdown files without the app?
chrisweekly 1 hour ago|||
ripgrep?
xnyan 2 hours ago|||
Hackernews is accessed using http. Why do you need a web browser when curl exists?
fredoliveira 43 minutes ago|||
Not gp, but because the way hackernews would render in a web browser versus curl is dramatically different, of course. There's a clear separation of presentation and content, and curl shows you presentation.

Notes being plain text files means that what you get by showing via a CLI is essentially the same as just `cat whatever-it-is.md`. Viewing a note via the CLI interface could have its merits (it could apply its own flavor of presentation), but come on now. Your example doesn't hold.

kepano 4 hours ago|||
You can view notes with Obsidian CLI. See the "read" commands. But also you can do that with your built-in command line tools.

https://help.obsidian.md/cli

giancarlostoro 3 hours ago|||
Oh snap! Thanks for that, I can really make good use of this!
spondyl 1 hour ago||
Oh neat, I had come across the headless client yesterday (and submitted a now-fixed bug report for it after running into some issues).

Before opening HN this morning and seeing this post, I actually wrote a post about how I'm experimentally using headless to publish my blog: https://utf9k.net/blog/obsidian-headless/

Well, that post was my experiment but I'll be looking forward to trying it out going forward.

There are of course many alternatives and I'm sure this workflow may have its pains but for now, it feels like a lot less friction between actually writing and having it published.

I've used plain Git for many years of course but I've also tried other rube goldberg machines such as various Git-inside-Obsidian plugins and so on but there's always just a bunch of "stuff" between writing and putting it online.

kepano 4 hours ago||
Oh! I worked on this project. If anyone has questions, I'll do my best to answer them!
Langley 1 hour ago||
Wanted to say thanks. We were literally talking about the lack of a cli sync at work last week and I had moved to Syncthing because of that gap.

Definitely will be looking at the official Obsidian sync plan now.

lukasb 2 hours ago|||
How are sync conflicts handled in the filesystem? Say I write to a file and another client's edit wins and mine is rejected.
kepano 2 hours ago||
The headless Obsidian Sync client works the same way as desktop and mobile clients, see:

https://help.obsidian.md/sync/troubleshoot

- Markdown files: Obsidian Sync merges the changes using Google's diff-match-patch algorithm.

- Other file types: For all other files, including canvases, Obsidian uses a "last modified wins" approach. The most recently modified version replaces earlier versions.

For conflicts in Obsidian settings, such as plugin settings, Obsidian Sync merges the JSON files. It applies keys from the local JSON on top of the remote JSON.

8cvor6j844qw_d6 4 hours ago|||
Are there plans to support scoped token permissions (specific folders or even specific notes)? I'd love to try setting up something that automatically updates a specific Obsidian note on a state change or cronjob, but I'd want to avoid giving access to the rest of the vault.

also, thanks for the great product, bought the vip catalyst as a show of support.

chrisweekly 1 hour ago|||
Related tangent: "Relay" (https://relay.md") lets you sync / share files based on directory (vs. the whole vault). That enables things like "my private vault contains a subdir for work, and my work machine syncs to only that child subdir".
kepano 4 hours ago|||
Thanks for your support! Sync is end-to-end encrypted so the server doesn't know about specific paths in your vault. You would have to set those permissions at the filesystem level, or with the tool you're using.
Vaslo 44 minutes ago|||
I’m using a couchdb instance to sync a bunch of local obsidian installs and use an obsidian plugin to keep them synced- would this change that or make it easier?
surgical_fire 3 hours ago|||
No question. Just wanted to drop by and say Obsidian is actually pretty cool. An absolute joy to use, and I only wish I learned about it earlier than I did.
Veen 3 hours ago|||
It would be nice if one could sync dot files in the vault. For example, the .claude or .pi folder containing skills and whatnot.
kepano 3 hours ago||
Yes, we're looking into that!
Mountain_Skies 4 hours ago||
No questions, just thanks for helping with a great product.
raybb 40 minutes ago||
Kinda related, does anyone have a favorite obsidian plugin for AI editing on mobile?

I wanna be able to talk to a document and iterate on it just like chatgpt with canvas but inside obsidian.

I've been digging around and haven't quite found anything to do that.

One potential challenge is I'm not sure how easy it would be to let it do tool calling to edit the document rather than spitting out the whole document each time (with risk of minor changes).

eric-p7 4 hours ago||
I wish I could use Obsidian to edit single markdown files.

If my project has a readme.md I don't want to create an obsidian vault with its configuration files in my project, just to open it.

kepano 3 hours ago|
Yeah we'll add that at some point.

It's a bit trickier than it seems because a lot of Obsidian configuration and app functionality is vault-specific. E.g. what theme should be used? What plugins should be available? Does autocomplete for [[links]] or properties do anything? Etc.

toddmorey 3 hours ago|||
VSCode opens single files outside of projects. What do they do? Personally I wouldn’t mind if it just defaulted to the settings of the last-used vault.
ezfe 3 hours ago||
If you don't have a window open, then VSCode opens with no active workspace. There are no workspace settings at all, and there is no file tree. But since VSCode has user level settings, these are what is used, including theming/etc.

If you have a window open, the file is opened to the workspace for that window. You can see this in action because the "Trust" dialog specifically says that you're trying to open untrusted files into a trusted workspace.

random3 3 hours ago|||
maybe you're overthinking it a little. You could make it of a default setup like the one you use for the sandbox, or some curated fast-loading one
segphault 1 hour ago||
This was my most-wanted Obsidian feature, so I’m thrilled to see this. It’s going to be great for server-side automation and RAG against Obsidian vaults.
js98 1 hour ago||
Oh wow thats good timing. I DIY’ed a workaround for this only last week for my openclaw instance. Happy to change it to this! https://jakobs.dev/granular-notes-access-limiting-openclaw-b...
kelvinjps10 5 hours ago||
It would be good since I don't use obsidian on my desktop but I do on my phone, so that way I can use it for syncing and then open the documents on Neovim on my desktop
AbstractH24 37 minutes ago||
How’s their mobile all these days?

Along with sync that was the other blocker for me always.

dcchambers 8 minutes ago|
Mobile app is pretty good, my biggest complaint is it won't sync in the background. It only syncs when you open it up. But it's well designed and fully functional.
AbstractH24 3 minutes ago||
That a nuisance as I spend a lot of time on the subway without service but not a total dealbreaker
lolive 1 hour ago|
Isn't there a script or a plugin to sync your vault to github, already? (may be even to sync several vaults, for example to share vaults between colleagues)
bshaughn 1 hour ago|
This tool should finally make it possible to setup a good web interface to my obsidian notes. I have a hacky setup using github as the backend storage system but its slow.

Ive been surprised at how few people are interested in an obsidian browser tool, but its great if I want to read / write notes from a corporate laptop for example.

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