Xtended vs Obsidian: Local Notes vs Portable AI Knowledge

The Bottom Line

Choose Obsidian if: You want a powerful local note-taking app with complete data ownership, enjoy customizing your workflow with plugins, and primarily work within a single environment.

Choose Xtended if: You need your knowledge accessible from any AI (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor), want instant aggregations and structured insights, or need explicit relational structure that travels with you across tools.

What Obsidian Does Brilliantly

Let's be clear: Obsidian is an excellent tool that millions use effectively. Here's where it shines:

True Data Ownership

Your notes are plain Markdown files stored locally. No vendor lock-in, no cloud dependency if you don't want it. You can open your vault in any text editor, sync it with any service, and your data is truly yours.

Graph Visualization

The graph view is genuinely beautiful. Seeing your notes as an interconnected web helps identify patterns and connections you might miss in a linear structure.

Plugin Ecosystem

With 1,000+ community plugins, you can customize Obsidian into almost anything—from a journaling app to a task manager to a writing studio. The Dataview plugin even lets you query your notes like a database.

Privacy-First

Everything runs locally by default. Your notes never touch a server unless you choose to sync them. For sensitive personal notes, this is invaluable.

Where the Approaches Diverge

The fundamental difference isn't feature-to-feature—it's about what each tool is built for.

The Portability Question

Obsidian's portability is often cited as a strength—and it is, for a specific definition of portable. Your Markdown files can be opened anywhere. But that's not the same as your knowledge being accessible anywhere.

Obsidian's Portability

Your files are portable. You can:

• Open them in VS Code, Bear, or any Markdown editor
• Sync them via iCloud, Dropbox, or git
• Back them up anywhere

But to make them accessible to AI, you need to:

• Install and configure an MCP server (technical setup required)
• Keep Obsidian running with the REST API plugin
• Accept that each AI tool needs its own integration path

Xtended's Portability

Your knowledge is API-accessible. You can:

• Query it from Claude Desktop via MCP
• Access it from ChatGPT via custom GPT or API
• Use it in Cursor, your own apps, or any MCP-compatible tool
• Run structured queries from anywhere with API access

Same knowledge, any AI, no reconfiguration.

The Relationship Question

Obsidian has bi-directional links—and they're powerful. Link [[Project Alpha]] to [[John Smith]] and you can navigate between them.

But links aren't relationships. A link says "these are connected." It doesn't say how.

In Obsidian:

[[Project Alpha]] is connected to [[John Smith]]
// But is John the owner? The sponsor? A stakeholder? The link doesn't say.

In Xtended:

Project Alpha --[owned_by]--> John Smith
Project Alpha --[sponsored_by]--> Sarah Chen
Project Alpha --[stakeholder]--> Mike Roberts

// Query: "Who owns Project Alpha?" → John Smith
// Query: "What does John own?" → Project Alpha, Project Beta...

Explicit relationships enable queries that links can't answer.

The Aggregation Question

This is where the architectural difference becomes most visible.

What you can ask Obsidian:

• "Show me all notes tagged #project"
• "Find notes linking to [[John Smith]]"
• "List notes modified this week"

What you can ask Xtended:

• "How many deals are in negotiation stage?" → SELECT COUNT(*) FROM deals WHERE stage = 'negotiation'
• "What's the total pipeline value by owner?" → SELECT owner, SUM(value) FROM deals GROUP BY owner
• "Which contacts have deals over $100K but no meeting in 30 days?" → Complex JOIN query

Obsidian is optimized for traversal—following links, exploring connections. Xtended is optimized for answers—aggregations, insights, structured queries.

When to Use Which

Use Obsidian when:

• You want a private, local-first note-taking system
• Your primary workflow is writing and linking ideas
• You enjoy tinkering with plugins and customization
• You don't need multi-AI access to your knowledge
• Graph exploration is more valuable than structured queries

Use Xtended when:

• You need your knowledge in Claude AND ChatGPT AND Cursor
• You want structured relational queries and insights
• Explicit relationships (not just links) matter for your use case
• You're building AI-assisted workflows that need structured context
• Setup simplicity matters more than infinite customization

Use both when:

• Obsidian for daily notes, writing, personal thinking
• Xtended for structured business knowledge, AI-accessible context

The Honest Take

Obsidian is not a competitor to dismiss. It's a thoughtfully designed tool that millions use effectively. If local-first, Markdown-based note-taking with rich customization is what you need, Obsidian is excellent.

Xtended solves a different problem: making your knowledge work for you across AI tools, with the query power of a real database and the accessibility of an API. It's less about taking notes and more about building a knowledge infrastructure that any AI can leverage.

Different foundations, different superpowers. Choose based on what you're building toward.