The Problem / Opportunity
There has been a very steep rise in AI/LLM development and we see more and more note taking applications integrating LLMs into their product. For example google just announced NotebookLM.
For me (and I think for many users), LLM integration is a major selling point nowadays. I love obsidian and use it for literally everything and I’m sure many “powerusers” exist out there. I have the feeling that in order for obsidian to stay relevant, LLM/AI integration will become obligatory (for any good note taking application)
I know that there are already plugins to use LLMs in obsidian but an integrated one would be a major selling point, especially for new / inexperienced / lazy users.
LLMs can be incredibly useful for text summarization and generation and I think many users would find an integrated LLM very useful and would be willing to pay for it, including myself.
Proposed solution
With an integrated, local LLM in obsidian I would like to be able to (most important first):
- Chat about my notes and links between them
- Autocomplete text based on existing vault content
- Autocomplete links based on existing vault content and linkage
Those are the base features I would expect. A cherry on top would be:
- LLM ability to reason about pdfs, images and other file formats
- LLM ability to take actions such as moving / relinking / rewriting notes
I think that even implementing only the chat feature will be super powerfull
Architectural setup
In order to preserve the great privacy properties of obsidian, I propose to use a local LLM and don’t send any data into the cloud. I’m by no means an LLM expert but I think the performance on mobile could be lacking a bit in that case?
I think the chat could easily be represented as plain text notes inside the vault in a user chosen directory.
Current workaround
Using third party plugins. This often involves self hosting stuff or using another third party service. All in all, not really convenient and not elegant.
PS
I love obsidian! And I don’t want to loose it 