Why I Went Back to Obsidian From Notion: Choosing a Notes Setup for the Local-AI-Agent Era

The creator who once made a video explaining why he moved from Obsidian to Notion now admits he's switched his main notes and project-management tool back to Obsidian. The trigger was a shift in workflow -- using terminal-based AI agents and local tools far more than before.

Cloud-based developer tools like Notion, Confluence, ClickUp, and Airtable work great out of the box, but the moment you try to bring in your own AI agents, existing local tools, or custom workflows, things get complicated. These major platforms tend to push users toward their own AI assistant, tied to a proprietary subscription and locked inside a closed ecosystem.

Technically, MCP servers, APIs, and CLI apps can connect these cloud tools to your own AI setup, but it still feels dependent on a cloud connection, slow, and not portable. That's what drove the decision to move workflows toward local, open tools -- and Obsidian, which just uses plain markdown files, fit that shift naturally.

In practice, that means writing guidelines into a 'skill' file that the AI agent reads: don't duplicate service-specific deployment details inside the skill itself, prefer managing infrastructure as code via Terraform or OpenTofu over ad hoc runtime changes, and document how key repositories like GitLab, DNS, and Prometheus should be handled.

With those rules in place, a single slash command from the terminal can generate an onboarding plan and checklist. His conclusion: for anyone who wants full control over their data, tools, and AI subscriptions, simple markdown files paired with Obsidian remain the best choice.