An Obsidian alternative that keeps the Markdown and adds an agent

What Obsidian does better

It is local, and it is free. A vault is a folder of Markdown files on your own disk. Obsidian is “free without limits”, with no sign-up — a commercial licence is optional — and it works offline because there is nothing to be online for. Sync, with end-to-end encryption, and Publish are paid add-ons.

The editor is yours to shape. Editing is instant. The core plugins include Bases (table, list, cards, kanban and map views over your notes), Canvas and the graph view, and the community directory lists thousands of plugins. There are native apps for desktop, iPhone, iPad and Android.

AI, the way you want it. The plugin directory has a whole AI category. Copilot’s agent mode runs Claude Code, Codex or opencode against your vault on the desktop; Smart Connections finds related notes with local embeddings and no API key; Text Generator writes with the provider of your choice. With the Obsidian Git plugin, the vault commits and syncs itself on a schedule.

What Memento does differently

Filing happens without you

Obsidian’s AI plugins work inside the app, while it is open: Copilot’s agent mode runs local processes on the desktop only, and Smart Connections indexes while you work. None of the READMEs of the most-downloaded AI plugins describes work that runs with Obsidian closed. Where a note goes, what it links to, and whether last month’s note is still true stay your job — or your agent session’s. Memento’s agent is hosted next to your library: a share from your phone is filed by the time you sit down, and a routine runs on a schedule with your laptop closed.

The agent’s work is labelled and reviewable

Obsidian keeps File Recovery snapshots for 7 days by default, Sync keeps a month or a year of history depending on the plan, and Obsidian Git commits on a schedule (its README calls the plugin highly unstable on mobile). That is history, not review: nothing marks a line as confirmed or merely inferred, and nothing sits between “the agent decided” and “the file changed”. In Memento, every fact is confirmed, inferred or disputed, cites a read-only source, and bigger edits wait in your inbox as a diff until you approve them — with Git underneath for the rest.

Nothing to run

No plugin to configure, no API key to paste into a settings pane, no laptop that has to stay on. The agent runs in a private sandbox, on your own Claude, OpenAI or other model account, with no network access until you approve a destination.

The same files, so you can go back

A Memento export is a folder of Markdown pages with [[wikilinks]], your original files and the full Git history — which Obsidian will open as a vault. Leaving is a folder copy, not a migration.

Pick Obsidian instead if …

… your notes must never leave your machine, organising is the part you enjoy, or you want plugins, Canvas and Bases today. And if what you want is an agent over your own vault, running on your own machine, see the DIY LLM-wiki setup — it is a genuinely good one. Memento is for the person whose vault rotted the moment they stopped filing, and who wants the agent without operating it. Filing a capture takes minutes of agent work (typically around eight), not the instant save of a local editor.

Moving from Obsidian

Drop your vault’s Markdown files — and the PDFs and documents in it — into Memento’s bulk import. Memento doesn’t mirror your vault page for page: each note is kept as a source, and the agent files what it says onto its own pages, linked the way the library is organised. Your vault stays exactly as it was, so you can keep both.