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Why Start With Obsidian?

Not because Obsidian has the most features. Because its product philosophy and the AI product I want to build are the same kind. And it all starts with someone who is full of questions about the world.

The Founder: A Person Full of Questions About the World​

Our founder is the kind of person who "wants to get to the bottom of everything."

He sees a good article and wonders why the author structured the paragraphs that way. He notices a product detail and digs into the design decision behind it. He finds himself unable to write and asks exactly which step he's stuck at.

This curiosity doesn't stop at thinking. He has done two things consistently for years:

First: massive note-taking. On May 27, 2016, he wrote his first note in Evernote β€” a diary entry about letting out a thunderous burp during an exam, and being grateful the teacher didn't throw him out. From that day on, he turned questions, observations, and ideas from everyday life into notes, saving them one by one.

Second: pursuing creation. He's not satisfied with just "knowing." The purpose of his questioning is to "make something" β€” videos, articles, products. He believes that the notes he accumulates will one day help him achieve something bigger.

But the problem lies exactly between "recording" and "creating."

8 Years, 6 Note-Taking Tools, and Still Unable to Start Writing​

From 2016 to 2023, he spent more time on note-taking tools than on all the articles he ever wrote combined.

  • Evernote (2016) β€” Went from 0 to 1000+ notes. Search got slower and slower. Things sank to the bottom.
  • OneNote (2017) β€” Bought his first laptop, a Surface Pro 4, just so he wouldn't have to copy from the blackboard in class anymore.
  • Effie (2021) β€” Clean, beautiful interface. But notes had no relationships β€” scattered everywhere.
  • Notion (2021) β€” Modular, fast cross-device sync. But you had to remember the exact title to find anything.
  • Obsidian (2022) β€” Finally could use [[wikilinks]] to manage notes, no longer agonizing over folder hierarchies.
  • Flomo (2023) β€” Dictate ideas through WeChat.
  • Logseq (2023) β€” Journal-centered, linking down to the paragraph level.

Every time he switched tools, he believed "this time it's finally the right one." Every time, he ended up with old notes turning into a swamp: he knew they were there, but had no motivation to dig through them β€” and couldn't even if he tried.

That Moment: Everything Was There, But Writing Was Impossible​

Late 2023, he sat in front of his computer, wanting to write an article about "solitude."

He searched "solitude" in Obsidian. Dozens of notes popped up. Things he'd written in his diary. Mentions in reading notes. A quick capture after listening to a podcast.

He spent 40 minutes browsing through these notes. After reading them, he wanted to write even less.

Not because he had nothing to write. Quite the opposite β€” there was too much, scattered across hundreds of notes, each with just two or three sentences. Piecing them into an article would take an entire afternoon just to reread everything.

In that moment, he realized something very specific:

My notes don't have a "writing problem." My notes have a "starting problem."

It wasn't a lack of material. It was the lack of someone to fish the material out of his notes, lay it on the table, and say: "Look, you already have all this. Just start from here."

With AI and Development Skills, No Need to Wait for Someone Else​

No tool on the market did this.

ChatGPT can help you write, but it doesn't know your notes. Obsidian can help you store them, but it won't proactively help you find "what you could write about." Notion, NotebookLM, Cursor β€” they're all solving different problems.

And he happened to have exactly two things: AI engineering capability and years of experience building products.

He didn't need to wait for someone else to build it. He could use his own strengths to craft a tool tailored for himself.

So he started from his own problem and wrote the first line of code. The goal was narrow: connect to an Obsidian Vault, input a topic, automatically find which existing notes could be used for writing. Not to write for you β€” to help you start writing.

From His Own Problem, to Other Creators' Problems​

After building the tool, he realized he wasn't the only one stuck.

Many creators face the same dilemma: notes accumulated over years, but when it's time to write, the sheer volume makes it impossible to start. AI writing tools are getting stronger, but they don't know your local notes and can't understand what you've been thinking about.

So he turned the tool into a product. It does only three things:

  1. You type a topic β†’ It finds relevant notes, forgotten fragments, and writable angles from your Vault, packaging them into a material pack
  2. You open a half-written document β†’ It tells you where you left off, gives you entry points to continue, packaging them into a reconnect pack
  3. You have no idea what to write β†’ It finds a writable topic from your old notes for today

No chatbot. No flashy features. Just three buttons.

Why Obsidian: Three Choices​

Choosing Obsidian out of six note-taking tools was not an accident.

1. The files are yours. Not the platform's.​

Your notes are .md files on your hard drive. Obsidian is just a "reader."

The platform could disappear tomorrow. Your files won't. This matters even more in the AI era β€” your data should never be locked inside any company's walled garden. Your writing materials, your thinking trails, they all belong to you.

2. It doesn't organize for you. It lets you build your own connections.​

Obsidian never says "you should categorize like this." It gives you [[wikilinks]] and lets you build your own connections between ideas.

Same philosophy as the Writing Agents Team: we don't write for you. We help you find what you already have. The connections are yours. The agent just assists.

3. Plugin ecosystem: users decide what they need.​

Obsidian's core is lean. Capabilities come from the plugin community. Features you don't want never appear in your interface.

That's also the Agents-team model we're building: a lean foundation, where users choose which agents they need. The ones you don't want won't bother you.

The Bigger Vision: An Obsidian-Style Writing Agents Ecosystem​

The Writing Starter is the first agent, but it's not the destination.

The founder loves Obsidian not just because it works well, but because of its ecosystem philosophy: encourage users to create, define, and extend on their own. Thousands of plugins in the marketplace β€” most weren't built by the Obsidian team, but by users driven by their own curiosity.

This is the same kind of AI ecosystem he wants to build:

AgentWhat It Does
Writing StarterFinds writable material in your notes, helps you begin
Semantic SearchGoes beyond keyword matching β€” finds notes by meaning
Local Knowledge BaseYour Vault is the knowledge base. No file uploads needed.
More agents…Defined by you and the community

Every agent follows the same rule: your data stays local. Agents serve you. Not the other way around.

What he wants isn't just a tool. It's an ecosystem β€” a Writing Agents Team that grows around your Obsidian Vault, encouraging creation, satisfying curiosity, and enabling everyone to grow real work from the notes they've accumulated.

Why Not a Web App? Why Not Notion?​

Because we're not building "yet another AI writing tool."

We're adding an AI assistance layer on top of a note ecosystem you've already trusted for years.

Your notes are in Obsidian. Your ideas are in Obsidian. Your writing material should grow from here too.

Switching platforms means asking you to start over. We don't want that.

For Those Who Have Also Wrestled With This​

If you:

  • Have also migrated between Evernote / Notion / Obsidian
  • Have also tried every classification method, only to end up in chaos
  • Have also sat in front of the computer, knowing you have things to write, but just couldn't start
  • Have also quietly believed that what you've accumulated should one day help you
  • Are also a person full of questions about the world, pursuing creation

Then you're welcome to give this a try. This isn't yet another note-taking app, nor yet another AI assistant.

This is a starter that turns your old notes into writable material. And the starting point of a growing Writing Agents ecosystem.

Read the Product Philosophy β†’ Β· Get Started β†’

P.S. If you're interested in the founder's full 8-year note-taking journey, watch this video: How to Choose a Note-Taking Tool? Xiaoka's 8-Year Hands-On Experience

Start using the Obsidian Writing Agents Team today β€” and let the notes that have been sleeping in your Obsidian grow again.