Headless Sync - Obsidian Help
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By raybb 2026-02-2821:51 Kinda related, does anyone have a favorite obsidian plugin for AI editing on mobile?
I wanna be able to talk to a document and iterate on it just like chatgpt with canvas but inside obsidian.
I've been digging around and haven't quite found anything to do that.
One potential challenge is I'm not sure how easy it would be to let it do tool calling to edit the document rather than spitting out the whole document each time (with risk of minor changes).
By spondyl 2026-02-2821:30 Oh neat, I had come across the headless client yesterday (and submitted a now-fixed bug report for it after running into some issues).
Before opening HN this morning and seeing this post, I actually wrote a post about how I'm experimentally using headless to publish my blog: https://utf9k.net/blog/obsidian-headless/
Well, that post was my experiment but I'll be looking forward to trying it out going forward.
There are of course many alternatives and I'm sure this workflow may have its pains but for now, it feels like a lot less friction between actually writing and having it published.
I've used plain Git for many years of course but I've also tried other rube goldberg machines such as various Git-inside-Obsidian plugins and so on but there's always just a bunch of "stuff" between writing and putting it online.
Also new: Obsidian joins the CLI gang
I’ve been having a lot of fun recently using AI CLIs with Obsidian. No plugins necessary because it’s just a directory tree of markdown files.
By mihaelm 2026-02-2817:34 I love that CLIs are getting a second wind.
I've been using iCloud to sync Obsidian, and have consistently run into the problem that iCloud file container access needs full disk permissions that I don't want to give the agent (or Ghostty). Does everybody use Obsidian's paid sync instead or what? Or SyncThing?
By rafaquintanilha 2026-02-2820:24 Definitely one of the biggest ROI is to pay for the sync. I regret all years I tried git-based alternatives (it's still useful to have it in git for backup, but not as the main syncing mechanism).
By kcrwfrd_ 2026-02-2818:32 I just pay for the sync.
I like that I can have some vaults that sync to both my personal and work laptops and other vaults that only sync to one or the other.
It’s awfully convenient without any vendor lock in since I can just take my plain markdown files and leave anytime.
By vergessenmir 2026-02-2818:091 reply Just pay for the sync. I used to juggle with git, rsync, inotify etc and other tools
Its one of the few subscriptions where it actually feels like money well spent
By hombre_fatal 2026-02-2818:50 I was using SyncThing, and it worked, but any time you have an Obsidian vault open on two devices, or shortly after another, you're always thinking about if you're going to have to clean up a bunch of sync conflict files later. And that mental overhead is not worth saving $4/mo.
The conflicts are never hard: it's like a git merge conflict where you just take the latest of every conflict block.
By typicalrunt 2026-02-2817:202 reply I used to use SyncThing, then Dropbox, then iCloud. But then I just caved and paid for Obsidian Sync and it is the best money spent aside from Claude. I don't have to tinker with weird settings anymore or deal with sync issues, it just works.
By FloatArtifact 2026-02-2817:341 reply I can't wonder if that's by design to make it hard for a plugin to have it's own sync mechanism. Definitely not proof of this that I know of, but a thought.
Obsidian is plain Markdown and JSON files.
There can't be a will from the devs to make it hard to sync.
It's just that unlike git or Dropbox or whatever, that are just generic "syncing" tools, Obsidian Sync has been built to provide the best experience with Obsidian.
By FloatArtifact 2026-02-2818:571 reply I'm talking more about the plugin architecture not about the file format or third-party applications. sync plugins seems to be pretty limited compared to what's offered for a subscription.
By peterb 2026-02-2817:33 Same
By 369548684892826 2026-02-2820:59 protip: You can make synctrain sync with an iOS shortcut, with the shortcut being triggered when Obsidian is opened or closed. This means you're always in sync, even if iOS hasn't allowed synctrain to run in the background.
By JimmyBiscuit 2026-02-2821:01 Im just running a Nextcloud on a raspberry pi to sync everything. Works flawlessly for multiple years now.
By seabrookmx 2026-02-2819:26 I've had good luck with syncthing. But I only sync between laptop and desktop.. the mobile story with syncthing isn't ideal.
By giancarlostoro 2026-02-2818:44 I use both and I prefer their builtin sync, since I also code on Linux.
By vulkoingim 2026-02-2820:31 I used iCloud in the past, but found that syncing between a few devices sometimes left my notes in a weird state - sometimes overwritten, missing, etc. I switched some time ago to https://github.com/remotely-save/remotely-save with backblaze and I periodically sync to a git repo for a second backup. No issues since then.
By vorticalbox 2026-02-2819:491 reply I have been using remotely save and a free bucket from backblaze. It as a s3 compatible api so works using the s3 feature.
By yard2010 2026-02-2820:32 I'm doing the same since this is the only method I found I can let my bot access the files, something I couldn't achieve with Obsidian Sync.. until now!
By codybontecou 2026-02-2819:12 I built a one-time purchase solution that might help you.
- https://isolated.tech/apps/syncmd
- https://isolated.tech/apps/syncmd/blog/obsidian-git-ios-setu...
You can git clone directly to your iOS file system which fixes the Obsidian git plugin issue so you can use the Obsidian git plugin on your computer and mobile devices.
By chrisweekly 2026-02-2817:21 Obsidian's paid sync works great for me.
By brnt 2026-02-2820:44 Resilio.
By etra0 2026-02-2819:50 I did run with this setup for a few months (I believe like, 5 months already?) and when it works, it's nice, but 90% of the time it has been extremely painful.
Something breaks, one automatically updates and then it breaks the entire database, SCRAM mode, recovering is painful, and all the time I get warnings, spam and logs, it's anything but seamless.
Which is a real pity, because when it works it feels magical to use within my laptop, my phone and my tablet, all self hosted, but the pain won and so I'm searching for new alternatives.
By willis936 2026-02-2818:43 I use this and a self-hosted couchdb. So far it seems to be good, but I haven't spent more than a few hours with it yet. I do have what appears to be a working setup on ios, macos, and linux. Obsidian's large number of plugins and control surfaces is a bit hazardous.
By qaq 2026-02-2819:36 github private repo works fine
It's not super useful yet- you can't really view notes in the CLI but you can can trigger features like search.
By WNWceAJ9R9Ezc4 2026-02-2818:212 reply Notes are stored in Markdown files. Why do you need Obsidian CLI to view notes when `cat` will do?
By goodmythical 2026-02-2818:362 reply Okay, so my command line fu is not what it perhaps should be, but if I could use obsidian without the bloated app, I'd be even more in love.
How would I be able to search obsidian links from the command line?
Like, to travel between notes in the app of course I can just click on connecting links or search, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to do that in a cli.
Is there some handy way to search the current folder and subfolders for text in a file with regex? Like some kind of >find term for all of my [[term]] entries in markdown files ?
By toddmorey 2026-02-2818:39 What is obsidian beyond a pile of markdown files without the app?
By chrisweekly 2026-02-2820:50 ripgrep?
Hackernews is accessed using http. Why do you need a web browser when curl exists?
By fredoliveira 2026-02-2821:47 Not gp, but because the way hackernews would render in a web browser versus curl is dramatically different, of course. There's a clear separation of presentation and content, and curl shows you presentation.
Notes being plain text files means that what you get by showing via a CLI is essentially the same as just `cat whatever-it-is.md`. Viewing a note via the CLI interface could have its merits (it could apply its own flavor of presentation), but come on now. Your example doesn't hold.
By kepano 2026-02-2818:29 You can view notes with Obsidian CLI. See the "read" commands. But also you can do that with your built-in command line tools.
By giancarlostoro 2026-02-2818:44 Oh snap! Thanks for that, I can really make good use of this!
