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

https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md
103•zakirullin•1h ago

Comments

krthr•1h ago
I really like the look and feel!
zakirullin•1h ago
Thanks a lot! I've been perfecting things for 5 years. A week ago I decided to open source it finally :)
dewey•1h 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•54m 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•25m ago
are you still using the project?
dilawar•1h ago
Nice project. People may also want to checkout Tiddlywiki.
blamestross•1h 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•52m ago
> People may also want to checkout Tiddlywiki.

Also Zettlr

GCUMstlyHarmls•18m ago
I ended up landing on 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.

armsaw•1h ago
Is there a way to follow inline links from a mobile device? Doesn’t seem to work for me in mobile Safari.
zakirullin•57m 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•53m 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•26m ago
What makes Golang a great fit in your opinion?
zakirullin•17m 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.

zakirullin•15m ago
Since I plan to use it for the rest of my life, I need the code and infrastructure to be radically simple and easy to maintain.

Like, I should be able to open it even after a few years, and do some fixes or add some features.

Go's ecosystem seems to share this mindset.

pratikdeoghare•15m ago
You might like what I made for myself https://github.com/pratikdeoghare/brashtag
qitz•45m ago
Nice Project, I really like the look!
zakirullin•40m 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•40m 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•39m 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 buggy plugins system.

trvz•38m ago
And the developers get compensated for their work how?
zakirullin•37m ago
That's yet to be decided :D

For the first time, I put a sponsorship button. Will see if it works.

pests•30m ago
The same way they do now?
helloplanets•26m ago
Feels like a lot of apps that launch these days have an open source core app and a subscription based platform.

The subscription based platform with automatic cloud hosting and other quality of life features, whatever those are depending on the app.

Although there's a bunch of 100% open source projects and developers that get enough donations to make it their full time job just off of that. Not that it's the way to go if you want to get rich, but it's still very much a real thing.

drumttocs8•22m ago
Are you asking how the open source ecosystem works in general?

In my experience, if the dev wishes to be compensated in dollars, they also sell a commercial license, cloud services, etc.

whateveracct•20m ago
get a job
portmanteur•18m ago
Given the explosion of open source released projects I've seen over the past six months, I believe developers are getting compensated by the tool they are building for themselves creating real value for them.

I have a problem, I spend a few days building a tool that solves the problem, it works pretty well for me, and I release it to let others get value from it. They make tweaks to it, perhaps improve it, and I get value from those enhancements and bugfixes.

mgfist•12m ago
Obsidian has a number of full time employees who all want to eat and afford rent
philipallstar•38m 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•35m 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.

thayne•19m ago
> So that anyone could tweak it however he wants.

That was true before the "AI era" as well.

zakirullin•11m ago
Well, yes.

Just now, any regular user can clone the repo and ask an LLM to tune it to his needs.

fyredge•15m ago
The reason is open standard. Obsidian uses markdown, that's it. No proprietary database, no fancy algorithm, no locked in platform, just a convenient way to manage your notes (jesus, that sounded like AI). You can realistically do it yourself, but they've helped you to do it for the low price of an online sync subscription.

That's why I will always hammer on open standards and federation.

ocimbote•39m 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•34m 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.

criddell•20m ago
> I assumed feature-parity

I looked hoping feature-parity isn't a goal. Obsidian is there for the people who want it. Do something more interesting than that

zakirullin•19m 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.

amai•33m ago
I'm missing export in https://textbundle.org/ format.

"TextBundle brings convenience back - by bundling the Markdown text and all referenced images into a single file."

gonzalohm•25m 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?
trvz•31m 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.

riffruff24•22m ago
another one in the same space: https://helixnotes.com/
nielsbjerg•22m ago
There's also https://logseq.com/
backscratches•20m 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•17m ago
Right, but most people want to be able to consult their notes on the go, quickly add items from their phone, etc.
Oras•16m ago
> There is no better interface for text than a terminal

It's a personal choice that cannot be imposed on everyone. Not everyone is a developer.

coreyh14444•18m 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•18m ago
Same idea, but directly inside your terminal: https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf
dodyg•16m ago
Or just use LogSeq https://discuss.logseq.com/t/whats-new-with-logseq-db-may-16...
takethebus•14m ago
nice, going to point my hermes agent to this instead of obsidian
tinyhouse•13m 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.

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

https://github.com/zakirullin/files.md
134•zakirullin•1h ago•62 comments

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