Hacker News: kepano

New comment by kepano in "Introduction to Obsidian"

kepano — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:37:37 +0000

Not necessarily. There are dozens of syncing methods aside from Obsidian Sync (Git, SyncThing, etc) and you can create your own plugin to sync.

New comment by kepano in "Introduction to Obsidian"

kepano — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:33:12 +0000

Make sure to set your Obsidian folder to "Keep downloaded" on iCloud for every device. Otherwise iCloud automatically deletes files locally to save space on your device.

It's a terrible default and Apple doesn't provide any way for developers to detect if it's off.

New comment by kepano in "Introduction to Obsidian"

kepano — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 23:29:04 +0000

The main value proposition of Obsidian Sync isn't storage. Obsidian is primarily used with text files which are tiny. My 20 year old collection of notes is only about 1GB for 19,000 files and a few images/pdfs.

I'm biased but I'd say the benefits over Google Drive are: 1. end-to-end encryption, 2. seamless integration with the app (e.g. version history), 3. granular control over what settings and files are synced for each device, 4. shared vaults.

In addition Obsidian Sync helps keep Obsidian 100% user-supported. Obsidian is not subsidized by advertising or any investors. And you can actually contact the team if you need help. See also: https://stephango.com/vcware

New comment by kepano in "Introduction to Obsidian"

kepano — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 23:16:53 +0000

What sync method are you using?

New comment by kepano in "Introduction to Obsidian"

kepano — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:44:27 +0000

What do you mean by "multiple vaults hardly work"?

If it helps Obsidian has a newish command called "Change vault..." that switches vaults without opening a new window.

New comment by kepano in "Potential Markdown Data Loss When You Will Move Away from Obsidian"

kepano — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:00:13 +0000

There's an Obsidian extension for Pandoc so you can convert your Obsidian notes to any other format.

https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/pull/11135

There are a number of basic errors in this report, but since it's LLM-written I suppose I shall put as much effort correcting them as the author put into generating them. Sigh.

New comment by kepano in "JSON Canvas Spec (2024)"

kepano — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:38:52 +0000

Yeah I agree! In the meantime Advanced Canvas plugin might help:

https://github.com/Developer-Mike/obsidian-advanced-canvas

New comment by kepano in "JSON Canvas Spec (2024)"

kepano — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:03:20 +0000

Perhaps the home page is more useful than the spec to explain the purpose of the file format: https://jsoncanvas.org/

See also the original inspiration for the format: https://obsidian.md/canvas

New comment by kepano in "JSON Canvas Spec"

kepano — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:22:06 +0000

What would make it great in your eyes?

New comment by kepano in "JSON Canvas Spec (2024)"

kepano — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:09:17 +0000

I'm not sure why it popped up today, but it's nice to see it on HN again! A brief timeline with some links to past discussions:

- 2022: The .canvas open format was created for Obsidian Canvas [0].

- 2024: Official 1.0 spec of JSON Canvas [1].

- 2024-2025: A number of apps/libraries built up around conversion, storage, and import/export [2].

- 2026: Obsidian Skills [3] includes support for .canvas (along with .md and .base) to make it easy for LLMs to read/write JSON Canvas, and opens interesting visualization/interaction patterns with agents.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34066824

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39670922

[2]: https://jsoncanvas.org/docs/apps/

[3]: https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills

New comment by kepano in "JSON Canvas Spec (2024)"

kepano — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 19:54:44 +0000

A file node can be a .canvas, so a .canvas can have nested canvases.

Obsidian's implementation of JSON Canvas supports this.

New comment by kepano in "JSON Canvas Spec (2024)"

kepano — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 18:50:07 +0000

You can see the data it created. Just click "Toggle output" in the bottom right corner.

New comment by kepano in "If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos"

kepano — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:17:25 +0000

I've been saying this since 2023

> If your data is stored in a database that a company can freely read and access (i.e. not end-to-end encrypted), the company will eventually update their ToS so they can use your data for AI training — the incentives are too strong to resist

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37124188

New comment by kepano in "Obsidian Sync now has a headless client"

kepano — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:19:41 +0000

- Automate remote backups

- Automate publishing a website

- Sync a shared team vault to a server that feeds other tools

- Give tools like OpenClaw access to a vault without access to your full computer

- Run scheduled automations e.g. aggregate daily notes into weekly summaries, auto-tag, etc

New comment by kepano in "Obsidian Sync now has a headless client"

kepano — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:45:30 +0000

https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills

New comment by kepano in "Obsidian Sync now has a headless client"

kepano — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:23:37 +0000

Yes, I'd like to add that.

New comment by kepano in "Obsidian Sync now has a headless client"

kepano — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:22:55 +0000

There's isn't an official one yet, but there are community options, or you could make your own. If you're wondering why this or that feature hasn't been added to Obsidian, remember we only have three full-time developers (and not trying to grow the team).

New comment by kepano in "Obsidian Sync now has a headless client"

kepano — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:19:55 +0000

> Control-N starts a new note not in the folder I’m in, but at the top level

Settings → Default location for new notes → Same folder as current file

items render well in Evernote but obsidian shows them as markdown

Settings → Editor → Default editing mode → Live Preview

New comment by kepano in "Obsidian Sync now has a headless client"

kepano — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 02:21:15 +0000

No promises but I hope we can solve that this year. I agree it would be a much better experience.

New comment by kepano in "Obsidian Sync now has a headless client"

kepano — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 02:19:33 +0000

Obsidian Headless and Obsidian CLI are two separate things. CLI requires running the full app, and lets you do anything Obsidian can do. Headless doesn't require the app but for now it is just a Sync client.

https://help.obsidian.md/headless

https://help.obsidian.md/cli