Skip to content
tech

What is Obsidian and Why Devs Are Switching From Notion

·4 min read·5 views

I kept my notes in Notion. It worked fine — until the day I tried to grep my files and realized they didn't exist on my computer. They were all on Notion's servers, accessible only through the web interface, in a proprietary format.

For a dev, that's like having code that only runs in another company's IDE. You don't own your data.

That's when I switched to Obsidian.

What Obsidian is

Obsidian is a free app for organizing Markdown notes. So far, nothing special — there are dozens of note-taking apps. What makes Obsidian different are three design decisions:

  1. Local-first. Your files live on your computer as normal .md files. No database, no proprietary format, no mandatory cloud. If Obsidian disappears tomorrow, your files remain readable in any text editor.

  2. Bidirectional links. You can link notes to each other with [[note name]]. Obsidian automatically creates the backlink — if note A links to note B, note B knows that A pointed to it. This creates a knowledge network that grows organically.

  3. Extensible via plugins. The community has created over 1,500 plugins. Git sync, Kanban boards, templates, Vim mode, calendar integration, web publishing — if you can imagine it, someone probably built it.

Why devs are adopting it

Devs have specific needs that Obsidian meets perfectly:

Native Markdown

No WYSIWYG editor that swallows your formatting. It's pure Markdown. You write ## Title and it's ## Title. Code blocks with syntax highlighting, tables, checklists — everything works as expected.

Git-friendly

Since they're .md files, you can version them with Git. That means full history, branches, diff, merge. I push my notes to GitHub and sync between machines with Git — without paying for any sync service.

Fast

Obsidian opens in 2 seconds, even with thousands of notes. Notion in a heavy browser? Sometimes takes 10+ seconds to load a page. For someone switching between notes all day, this matters.

Graph view

The graph view visually shows how your notes connect. It looks like a toy at first, but when you have 100+ notes, it reveals patterns and connections you wouldn't see otherwise. It's like a map of your knowledge.

Works offline

Opened your laptop on a plane? On a bus with no signal? Your notes are there. Always. No loading, no "reconnecting," no "this page can't be loaded."

Obsidian vs. Notion: to be fair

Notion is excellent for team collaboration and projects with many people. Databases, views, permissions — Notion is unbeatable at that.

Obsidian shines for personal knowledge. Study notes, technical documentation, decision journals, runbooks. Everything that's yours and that you want to control.

It's not about one being better than the other. It's about using the right tool for the context. I use both: Notion for collaborative projects, Obsidian for my second brain.

How I use it daily

My notes folder (which Obsidian calls a "vault") has 3 areas:

  • Projects — one note per project with decisions, architecture, useful links
  • Incidents — what happened, when, how I resolved it, what I learned
  • References — configs, commands, snippets I use frequently

Each note has tags and links to other notes. When I document a security incident, I link to the response runbook and the configs I changed. Over time, this creates a knowledge web where nothing stays isolated.

Obsidian as an AI interface

I use Obsidian as the visual interface for my AI agent's brain — see how I set it up.

The Obsidian notes folder is the same one Claude Code uses as memory. I edit in Obsidian with a graphical interface, Claude Code accesses it via terminal. Both read and write to the same Markdown files.

With MCP (Model Context Protocol) and RAG plugins, Obsidian stops being just a note-taking app and becomes the database for your AI assistant.

Getting started in 5 minutes

  1. Download Obsidian — it's free for personal use
  2. Create a folder anywhere on your computer
  3. Start writing a note about your current project
  4. Use [[]] to link to other notes
  5. Install the Obsidian Git plugin if you want Git sync

Don't try to organize everything at once. Start writing. Structure emerges naturally as you link notes to each other.

After 2 weeks of use, open the graph view. That's the moment most devs understand why people call Obsidian a "second brain."

Want to apply this to your project?

Career, code & digital product consulting.

Work with Billy
Billy

Billy

Full Stack Dev & Empreendedor Solo

Building products with code and AI. Creator of HubNews and Sistema Reino.

GitHubLinkedInTikTokWork with me →
Share:XLinkedInWhatsApp

You might also like

I Built a Shared Brain for Claude Code with Obsidian and GitI use Claude Code on 4 different machines. Each instance started from scratch, with no memory of what the others already knew. I fixed it with Git, an Obsidian notes folder, and a connector that ties it all together.I'm Shipping 3 Apps Simultaneously — Here's How I Automated EverythingManually configuring App Store and Google Play for each app is torture. Here's how I use Fastlane, ASC CLI, EAS, and GitHub Actions to automate screenshots, metadata, certificates, and deployments for 3 React Native apps at once.