GoKawiilLast updatedUpdated: Aug 26, 2026 by Simon Späti · CreatedCreated: Apr 24, 2026 · 8 min read recently updated Recent changes Aug 26 today +160 / −84 words Aug 6 2 weeks ago +4 / −0 words Jul 30 3 weeks ago +32 / −32 words Jun 9 3 months ago +9 / −0 words Jun 1 3 months ago +85 / −179 words May 29 3 months ago +12 / −0 words May 27 3 months ago +201 / −9 words May 18 3 months ago +32 / −15 words May 11 4 months ago +13 / −0 words Apr 30 4 months ago +1084 / −1057 words Apr 27 4 months ago published · 1792 words
Everyone is using Obsidian for AI, or wants to use it to become more productive. But I think it’s a dead end.
The reasons are clear: Obsidian notes are open on your local disk in an open format, Markdown, and accessible to everyone, including your AI agents. This makes it as great and easy an integration as possible. But should you actually use AI with your notes? And if so, what are the use cases or ways you should interact with it?
First of all, if you use Vibe Code Agents with Obsidian, use the Obsidian CLI. It will be much faster to return your files, search, or act, grepping through the files.
Second, I’m a strong proponent of avoiding adding lots of AI-generated summaries[^1] or other on-the-fly-generated text to my vault. The reason is simple: over time, I don’t know anymore whether the content was written by me or by an AI, and my own, much more valuable thoughts get diminished by “AI Slop”.
Also, when searching for something, you need to fight through the noise of generated stuff. If you only have your own writing, it’s all valuable, or at least there’s a reason why you noted it down. There was a conviction, idea, or something that moved you. Yes, it’s good in certain areas, and mostly on-the-spot summaries seem great, but every time I come back to them, I find them very average. It doesn’t help me, as it didn’t highlight the things I would, and I need to reread anyway. What I do sometimes with Obsidian Webclipper, if I create a new note, is summarize it in one sentence or a few. I clearly mark it as AI-generated and even put it in a quote, so it’s clear to me, and to anyone in 5 years, that it wasn’t mine. If I have added my own thoughts and writing, I will just remove the generated paragraphs (not my words).
But, use it for advanced research, like finding related notes. I think this might be the best use case. But don’t use it for tagging or organization, because eventually all your relations and connections won’t count for anything, since they aren’t made by you. The power lies in the deliberately created graph of notes, your very own Second Brain.
My Obsidian Vault with Smart Lookup and related notes with Smart Connections and local graph | Also check out Vim Motions for Writers to see my writing workflow and how I write
I personally don’t use it like that yet, but I might one day with a powerful local model, since I have lots of sensitive notes I don’t want to upload anywhere. Plus, it takes away the thinking part of My Obsidian Note-Taking Workflow. I don’t want to replace my human thinking yet. But I use a mathematical or local model with Obsidian Smart Connections, or the Graph Analysis plugin.
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