Obsidian Gets Messy Once Files and AI Enter the Mix
Users are frustrated by the complexity of managing information within Obsidian, particularly as they try to integrate external tools, AI, and diverse file types. The desire for a more fluid and efficient workflow, minimizing organizational overhead and maximizing knowledge retrieval, is a recurring theme. Many feel their current structure is optimized for manual browsing, not for AI or broader use.
SOURCES (60)
“I'm not defending Apple Notes over Obsidian - I agree they serve different purposes. Just challenging the argument in your second sentence: AN does linking, tagging, and Smart Folders, which is like a saved search. Basic capabilities compared to Obsidian, but it's sufficient for many…”
“I built my system around entity types (Definitions, Literature Notes, Clippings... Literature notes come from Zotero, Definitions capture concepts with aliases, I made a simpler version of this for my AI for Public Relations students .”
Acorny Sync — bring your reading highlights into Obsidian as Markdown
“Thanks! To answer your questions: The workflow is mostly manual. I write and organize notes directly in Obsidian. Claude handles editing, gap-filling, and expansion on the manuscript side, but nothing is piping content into the vault automatically. Every note is deliberately placed. I could probably automate the placement side of that with deep links, but haven't gotten there yet. The dashboard is built with Obsidian's native tools: Dataview for the progress tracking and dynamic counts,”
“This is incredible. As an AI enthusiast and a creative writer.. I love it! Could you tell us more about how this works for you practically? Are you using Codex/Claude Code to capture your notes/brainstorming, and automatically writing/updating markdown files to obsidian? Then, as your tagged obsidian brain grows, how have you developed the dashboard that sits on top of that knowledge base, to be as nice as you have it here? Great work!”
“I'm struggling with this , too. Some of my people information is for historical reference, and I have scans of business cards from way back in the day when those were a thing. Would you store the business card scan as an attachment to the "person" note?”
“I believe there's a Folder Notes community plugin you could look into! You should also check out Kepano's vault to see how he's utilized properties and Bases--it's pretty easy to give every note a `parent` property and create a base that searches for a note's children. The main problem with tags is that they don't play nice with Bases--you would need to create a Base for each tag, or at least a different view for each tag. For example-- let's say you have a nested tag”
“I've been kicking around an idea of creating a sort of a journal/knowledge base for my family. I've considered Obsidian given its features with linking, customization, and markdown document compatibility for future proofing, but it's not really designed to be a cloud service, at least not in the way I'm thinking about it. Ideally I have something that lives on my server and then I can access that from my mobile and PC devices without having to sync files between devices. Things I”
“Been using Obsidian for about a year and my vault is in decent shape overall, but there's always this category of notes that just refuse to behave. Random observations, halfformed ideas, things that are adjacent to multiple projects but not really part of any of them. Right now they all pile up in an inbox folder that I tell myself I'll sort later, and later never comes. I tried tags but then I end up with tags that are too broad to be useful and too narrow to reuse. Linking works better”
My vault template: typed pages, enforced wikilinks, and a linter that keeps the graph honest
“[[Note you want to link to|text you want to appear in current note]] [[Name of note with faction info|name of character]]”
“So, recently, I've started using obsidian for taking notes. I want to ask, what's the ultimate way to make the use of obsidian for my notes? I don't want to take the nktes in that regular way of just writing it. I want everything to be connected. Any recommendations for the structure of the notes? Thank you! submitted by /u/Jesse_James281 [link] [comments]”
“I’m using obsidian to build a ttrpg campaign and currently building it to be a wiki that my players will be able to use to access world building lore and info. It’s also helping me keep myself organized during this world building portion I’ve been doing. Eventually I’ll use it for session notes where I can use tags to help me find old information I had said.”
“Hey everyone, longtime lurker here! :) I’m currently using Anytype to organize my daily journal and writer notes in two separate spaces. Lately, I've been watching some videos on Commonplace Notebooks and would love to add one to my setup to consolidate various notes I currently have scattered across other apps. However, while trying to implement these changes, I found myself fighting Anytype's structure rather than working with it. Before Anytype, I used Notion. It worked well for my wo”
“You're in luck, Obsidian supports direct Notion import . Obsidian doesn't blow up its size unexpectedly. Notes are just text files + light metadata index db, so miniscule storage usage. Maybe some complex plugins that index the whole vault could take up more space over time.”
“It’s really light weight unless you’re attaching a lot of pdfs or images. As far as ease of transfer it kind of depends on where it’s coming from. If you can export your current stuff to markdown files, then it could be fast.”
“You don't have to read the docs to know about this. Whenever you make a wikilink, the bottom tells you about all the special characters you can use in the link. # to link headers, | to change the display name, and ^ to link to mid-header/to a footnote mark. The only thing that it doesn't tell you is that you can embed notes by putting an exclam before the link. Most things in Obsidian at the very least nudge you in the correct direction of how to use them if you're curious, though it”
“Your question has been answered, but I would suggest that you keep the link and the note name the same. It helps to build a better mental map of the notes.”
“What are some guidelines, "rules" or principles that helped for you when it comes to managing your notes/vault? Either related to using Obsidian or just taking notes in general. To give some examples, here are some principles that really helped for me: - Use a "bottom-up" approach instead of a "top-down" approach when organizing your notes. In other words, use properties and tags instead of folders. When you use folders it leads to a very rigid structure that is dif”
“I have increasingly come to think that outliners are a better foundation for note-taking than document-based systems like Obsidian, especially now that AI is becoming part of how we search and retrieve information. The big difference is not how the notes look. It is how the information is structured. In a document-based system, a paragraph is usually just a piece of text inside a file. The headings and paragraphs around it may provide context when you are reading the document, but that context i”
“absolutely! or, i can at least point you to the obsidian guide on aliases, and then if you have any questions i am 100% here to help!!! https://obsidian.md/help/aliases i know that getting from EILi5 to what they tell you above, lol, so do this: make sure you have properties turned on (settings--"editor" under options-- "properties in document" under display.) and your choice of source (YAML/text properties) or visible (more user-friendly view) go into your note you want to s”
[[notes name|what you want it to say in the actual note]]
“Hi, so I'm new to Obsidian, and I'm trying to create a link between two notes, but I can't seem to link it unless I name the text and the note exactly the same. For example, I want to be able to create a link between the name of a character that would appear in a paragraph and the note named after its faction, where all the members are detailled, not needing the exact name of the faction to appear for me to be able to create the link (ex. create a path between the word "Emeric&q”
“I have personal AI assistant connected to my telegram chat l, it will take note to my Obsidian vaults. I'll take a picture of my physical notebook and it will handle.”
“Obsidian's a markdown editor, it's a note-taking app, it's a second brain. It's a lot of things to different people, but one of them is that it's highly customizable. There are other completely free pure markdown editors. What's wrong with using colored fonts? If I type in <u><b>Bold Underline</b></u> into Obsidian it will render it bolded and underlined, if you want to underline anything in Obsidian, which it will do quite happily, it will do so i”
“https://preview.redd.it/dh48j1u83wdh1.png?width=659&format=png&auto=webp&s=7faeaf3bb910a7f43482efe7cfaef24b9b64f993 Started using Obsidian when I stumbled on this community to assist in a project I am working on to chart the impact of WWII on the crewmen from the USS Sarpedon (ARB-7). She was a repair ship that was converted from a tank landing ship and saw only brief action right at the end of the war, arriving in Okinawa's Buckner Bay the day before the 2nd bomb was dropped on”
“MoC, lots of properties, and hope. Some people use separate vaults too, but for me.. Kitchen sink, meet ocean.”
“do you mean like you read to Claude like a audiobook? wow, that's a lot of work, but also, very good for retaining the content of whatever you wrote”
“Or in this case it may be good to import into a separate vault. Then it is trivial to copy individual notes into the main vault without leaving Obsidian.”
I also have a CLI that can validate notes against type definitions
“I have a bunch of stuff on Keep that I have used for maybe 5 years. But it's got a lot (I mean a lot) of trash too. Is it worth importing all those notes into Obsidian? I am just now starting to use Obsidian - fyi. submitted by /u/Ok-Construction-4358 [link] [comments]”
“Hi! I used lots of pdf software and I'm a noob at Obsidian. As a user of handwriting plugins in Obsidian, and I loved one of them so much that I even contributed a few features via Pull Requests. Today, I want to recommend a workflow that combines two plugins. If you want to create, expand, and write on PDFs seamlessly without ever leaving Obsidian, you should definitely try this setup: Kirit0-00's modified version of obsidian-handwritten-notes: This brilliant PR adds a `+` button featur”
“I've found it useful. I don't have the ai draw up notes or even ingesting but I do have it select three notes and make a "morning paper" based on those notes. It helps me interact with old ideas, surface connections I wouldn't make on my own or make me see where the thin spots in my own knowledge base are. I don't want to hoard notes I want to interact with them and this helps as a muse in some ways to spark a thought or new note. I also use it for the dredge if somethi”
“Sorry for not seeing this earlier. It depends on how you're combining them, and what style of footnotes are you using. If you're using numbered footnotes (e.g. `[^1]`), then you cannot straight copy and paste, because footnote `[^1]` from Note 1 will get confused with footnote `[^2]` from Note 2. The Longform plugin has some scripts can help with this problem ( https://github.com/kevboh/longform/issues/44 ) by automatically reordering all the footnotes when merging notes. If you are usin”
“One folder for literature notes, one folder for permanent notes. It’s not ‘mixing’ so much as ‘consolidating’. Like having your own Wikipedia at your fingertips as you write.”
“I've been using obsidian for years. I think the most flexible answer is to use a folder in your main vault. You have access to all your templates and can utilize them, you can keep those notes organized into their own structure, and you can remove them later on en mass without needing to maticulously sift through hundreds of notes and their connections.”
“Keep them separate for now. Since they're just markdown files you can easily copy them into your main vault at a later date. It's harder to pull specific info out of an existing vault”
“Yes, You can fine-tune your Obsidian vault towards academics, private life stuff or writing/TTRP and more. Search for posts in this subreddit and you will find a lot of useful information! The only danger is that you will fall into the rabbit hole of playing too much with Obsidian instead of actually writing your book or whatever you want to do. That and losing everything, because you are not backuping your files and then something random happens, haha.”
“Granola are cracking down on their auth and I can no longer pull my meeting notes out and put them in Obsidian (my plugin is gonna have to be deprecated: https://github.com/tomelliot/obsidian-granola-sync/).That means I'm gonna need a different meeting transcription/summary pipeline. There's a cambrian explosion of meeting transcription tools (https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Show+HN%3A+transcription). It's awesome.I've tried some, but haven't found one that works how I want. Can you help me find one t”
“I use (and can recommend) the `Toggle readable line length` plugin - defaults to ctrl-shift-E to switch, and works in edit and view modes just fine. EDIT - re-reading, I may have misunderstood. Your phrasing is a bit weird, but sounds like you want to nominate - somehow? - that some files don't get justified, and other files do. It's hard to beat the speed of the hot-key above, but if you want to start tagging files - I guess that's the only way, but who knows what you have in mind -”
“It basically is a game for me now. Transferring my new DnD campaign’s notes from Evernote to obsidian, then going through and creating all the markdowns, and organizing the note pages. It’s been a lot of fun to do, I just need to settle on a methodology for everything so I can stop going back and forth updating old stuff.”
“Hello guys, I was wondering if there is a setting or plugin that allow to have notes with readable line length on and notes with readable line length off in Obsidian, Instead of just having the same setting applied to all notes. Thanks in advance for the answers. submitted by /u/MariusSMarita [link] [comments]”
“Right now, I’m basically just using Obsidian as a local Markdown notebook with backlinks. I make one note every day to write down what I need to do, random thoughts, and anything that comes up. When I see related ideas, I link them together with [[note name]] . If I want to use AI to build a more advanced personal knowledge base, how should I go about it? And what plugins would I need? submitted by /u/Adept_Magician_8315 [link] [comments]”
“I am quite new to obsidian and I want to make a journal that I can add some sort of tags or specific words to track symptoms and causes. For example, I would write about level of exercise and on the same day I would have stress level and then I need to later be able to correlate the patterns. To see if higher exercise lower stress or something. (I am so sorry if this doesn’t make sense). But I honestly have no idea how to do this, I was told that obsidian would be a great place to do it but I ne”
“Just to note that you can tell Obsidian to store images in the same folder as the note it lives in.”
“Someone seriously teach me about epic progress nites how ti form problem, what to include and what not. i am literally struggling with progress notes, assessment and problems and basically everything, chart review on epic. Attendings, residents, please help! submitted by /u/MaterialPlantain2866 [link] [comments]”
“My vault has been running for about two years and a handful of notes have turned into monsters. One in particular covers a project that keeps evolving, and the note is now so long that scrolling through it feels counterproductive. Splitting it into smaller notes seems obvious, but then I lose the singledocument flow I actually like when reviewing progress. Right now I have a rough structure using headers and some internal links to jump around, but it still feels clunky. I tried using a canvas to”
“So, recently discovered Obsidian and want to use it for TTRPG Management/World Building. Been watching some tutorials and reading up on things as I get things set up. I'm trying to build templates for the types of notes I want to keep. One is Characters and one is the Factions they are part of. I set up a list type property on the Characters called CharFact so that if they are part of multiple factions they can have multiple listed. I then wanted to set up a list in the Faction notes templat”
“You may also find the Easy Bake plugin helpful. https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/easy-bake”
“Hey! I'm very new to obsidian but mostly loving it so far. One thing I really don't like is that when I link something to another note, the headline is bold, green and underlined and this is so distracting in the middle of other basic text. I have so far managed to get rid of the underline via CSS snippets and the bold only manually by keyboard shortcut. I would like them to automatically not be in bold and also not be green. I am using the Retroma theme if that's important. Can anyo”