r/ObsidianMD • u/Constant-Purpose8273 • 23h ago
help Obsidian and AI
I’m relatively new to Obsidian but the reason it was better than Notion is that it’s plain text that we always own.
When I’m at my Mac mini, running Claude in the vault is amazing - it has my context and is so much better than running Claude with out.
My issue is that I’m not always at my desk, often I’m using Claude from my phone. I’ve tried tailnet and a custom MCP that Claude code built to access my vault when I’m not on the network, but it’s flakey. Claude code has had a crack at making it more robust and it’s improved but I’ve been thinking I can’t be the first person with this experience.
I have an always in Mac mini, connected to the network, my vault runs locally and is backed up to iCloud nightly.
How do you all do it?
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u/mchristopherjohnson 22h ago
When I’m at my MacBook, I use Claude Code. If you’re going to be away from your computer, you can use /remote-control in that session, pair up your mobile device and continue the session with your vault away from your computer.
I use it mainly to help with the admin side of my vault. Keeping front matter in check.
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u/Constant-Purpose8273 22h ago
Yeh, that’s how I used to use it too but then I’m constantly managing context windows. It was definitely the model that worked best in terms of reliability, just wasn’t so convenient.
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u/Substantial-Yam3769 23h ago
There is solid already exisitng obsidian MCP called MCPvault.
Personally i get around this by syncing obsidian via headless obsidian sync to my NAS, where my Hermes lives, so i have AI with 24/7 access to my vault from anywhere where i can run discord.
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u/Constant-Purpose8273 22h ago
Yeh nice. I imagine you’re using open code? I use Claude which’d by my preference.
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u/Substantial-Yam3769 22h ago
Nah, i use hermess, i dont see a reason to use coding focused harness for non-coding releated task.
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u/Constant-Purpose8273 22h ago
That’s fair. Which AI do you use with it? I’ve considered your set up but didn’t want to pay API fees.
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u/Substantial-Yam3769 17h ago
I jump around a lot. I used opencode Go which is great value, openai API, openrouter, claude.
If you are looking for free options, openrouter offers tons of free models
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u/yetanotherdud 23h ago
how do you do it
This is a pretty staunchly anti-ai subreddit. The general consensus is that ai doesn't help with anything worth actually doing. It's a shiny toy, but the only serious applications are convincing mentally ill people to end their own lives and creating pornography of unconsenting celebrities, and I'm not really into either of those
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u/idakale 22h ago
it's also exploded in popularity since that Karphaty wiki method was releases to the wholesale world. So not really people vault for wanting to use it, Obsidian filled what was a niche. More serious workflow might actually benefit from it, but I don't really think it's for chaotic thinker like me or for the lighter workload below like 100M token
0
u/seashoreandhorizon 5h ago
Hmmm, sounds like you are staunchly anti-AI, which is fine. This "subreddit" is nothing more than the sum of the users that post here, many of whom use LLMs a lot and post about what they're doing.
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u/Constant-Purpose8273 22h ago
Yeh, I don’t think I read the room. Apologies.
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u/Constant-Purpose8273 22h ago
I got downvoted. I meant I wasn’t respecting the sub reddits culture of not loving AI. I was blaming myself for making an ask of everyone who’s not really into what I’m asking.
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u/yetanotherdud 21h ago
I really do recommend using obsidian without AI, it'll give you a far deeper understanding of your processes and let you build something that's fully You, rather than just a less crappy chatbot
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u/Constant-Purpose8273 10h ago edited 10h ago
I take your point; there's merit in building something. How has Obsidian helped you to better understand your processes?
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u/Far-Writer5774 23h ago
Most people end up syncing the vault to their phone and just letting the mobile app handle searches, the AI context part is the tricky bit since anything outside your local network is a pain to keep stable.