Obsidian by Dynalist Inc.

After years of Evernote, Notion, Roam, Bear — Obsidian is the first where I truly own my data. Plain text markdown files in a folder on my disk. Sync via iCloud, Dropbox, Syncthing, Git, or their paid Sync service ($8/mo, E2E encrypted). No lock-in. If Obsidian shuts down tomorrow, I still have my notes in any text editor.

The plugin ecosystem is wild. 1000+ community plugins: Kanban, Dataview (query your notes like a database), Excalidraw (hand-drawn diagrams), Spaced Repetition, Calendar, Git, Pandoc export. Core plugins cover daily notes, graph view, backlinks, outlines, tags, search, templates.

Graph view looks cool but I rarely use it practically. Backlinks and Dataview queries are where the power is.

Spent two weeks just setting up: Zotero integration for citations, Dataview for literature review tables, Templater for note templates, DataviewJS for custom dashboards. But now my workflow: highlight PDF in Zotero → auto-creates literature note in Obsidian with citation key → template prompts me for summary, methodology, key quotes → Dataview auto-populates my review table.

Vim keybindings built-in (no plugin needed). Canvas (infinite whiteboard) for concept mapping. Mermaid diagrams render inline. Math via KaTeX/LaTeX.

Mobile app is good now (was bad at launch). Sync service worth $8/mo for seamless phone ↔ desktop. Self-hosted Sync via Remotely Save plugin works but setup is technical.

Amazing for personal knowledge. Terrible for teams. No real-time co-editing. No comments. No permissions. Sharing a vault = sharing a folder of markdown files. Git sync works but merge conflicts on markdown are painful.

We use Notion for team wiki, Obsidian for personal research notes. The friction of context-switching is real. If you need team knowledge base, look elsewhere.

Also: no WYSIWYG. Pure markdown with live preview. Some non-technical team members bounced hard.

Canvas (core plugin since 1.4) lets you arrange notes, PDFs, images, web embeds on infinite canvas. Connect with arrows. Group. It's not Miro/FigJam — it's your actual notes, visually arranged. Double-click a note on canvas → opens in editor. Changes sync both ways.

Excalidraw plugin: hand-drawn diagrams that live as `.excalidraw.md` files — text-searchable, version-controlled, embeddable in notes. Draw architecture diagram, link boxes to actual code files.

This combo replaced my Miro subscription. Thinking visually with my actual knowledge base, not a separate tool.

Obsidian Publish ($8/mo extra) hosts your vault as a static site. Custom domain, password protection, analytics, search, graph view on web. Themeable via CSS. My public docs site: docs.example.com — updated on every save.

Not as polished as Notion's public pages. No forms, no database views. But for documentation, changelogs, personal wiki — it's fast, clean, and yours. SEO is decent (static HTML, proper meta tags).

Alternative: Quartz (free, open-source static site generator for Obsidian vaults). More control, free hosting on GitHub Pages/Netlify. Steeper setup.