Obsidian note-taking and knowledge base software

Obsidian is a private, powerful knowledge base and note-taking application designed to work on local Markdown files. Created by Shida Li and Erica Xu, the founders who previously developed the outliner tool Dynalist, Obsidian was launched in 2020 and quickly developed a devoted following among researchers, writers, and knowledge workers worldwide.

The application is developed and maintained by Dynalist Inc., an independent software company founded by the original creators and headquartered in Canada. Obsidian operates on a 100% user-supported model with no outside venture capital funding, giving the company complete independence over product development and privacy standards.

While software like Obsidian is developed digitally rather than manufactured physically in factories, its codebase and digital releases are created and managed out of Canada. Obsidian is popular across Europe, including Italy, for personal note-taking, Second Brain workflows, and digital archiving.