I have, for quite a while now, used Obsidian as my tool of choice for taking notes. You’re probably already familiar with it, but if not, think of it as Wikipedia, but on your own computer and for your own information.

There are alternatives. The obvious one is a tool called Notion, which I’ve never tried. When originally choosing between the two, I opted for the simplicity of Markdown files, with the idea that I wanted good data portability, and I also wanted an extensible tool without potentially expensive vendor lock-in.

That turned out to be the right choice because LLMs work well with Markdown documents. And now, it’s easier than ever to integrate agents with your own digital brain. With tools like Claude Cowork and OpenAI Codex (now the ChatGPT app), all you need to do is create a new project with your Obsidian folder as the root for an instant productivity unlock. For example, if you keep your to-do list items in there (which I would recommend), it’s easy to have the agent add items, change statuses, reorganize based on changing priorities, suggest tasks for specific days or contexts, or bug you about the critical-priority tasks that you keep putting off.

Install Obsidian → Create a Vault → Install an Agentic Tool → Create a Project → Enable Mobile Remote Control → Done.

The easy remote access from your phone is what I really love about this.

Of course, you can already access your Obsidian notebook from anywhere by paying for the synchronization service or just using Dropbox. (I use the paid synchronization.) But the most interesting piece here is having the remote AI interface to those notes, with almost no setup whatsoever. Very little, at least.

So, for example, I have a lot of my best ideas in the morning when I’m in the middle of eating breakfast and when I absolutely don’t want to stop eating to write anything down. I could use voice memos, of course, but then I have to fuss with that later. I have Obsidian on my phone, so I could type it manually or dictate an entry with Siri. But I hate typing and swiping and also Siri dictation. Instead, dictating directly into the ChatGPT app, I get good voice-to-text transcription quality and an agentic tool that I can use to add my notes to the right note or create a new note.

Of course, you can add some configuration to specify how agents work with your notes. I’ve created a few skills in my notebooks for adding and editing notes so that they’re done to my taste. And I have a small AGENTS.md file as well with some simple instructions, for example, not allowing orphan notes (everything needs to be linked) and creating index pages.

But you don’t need to do any of that.

(The most deterministic way to check for and enforce linked pages would be to create a script that checks for orphan files and either refer to that in your AGENTS.md file or, even better, wire it up with a hook, but the theme of this blog post is simplicity, and you don’t need to do that for personal notes unless you care to.)

Just install a tool like Claude or the ChatGPT app on your phone and your computer, set up the remote connection, install Obsidian, create a notebook, open that folder as a project in your AI harness, and you’re done. It’s unbelievably easy and powerful.

Work with Me

By the way, I’m looking for my next opportunity and I’m available for consulting. Shoot me an email and let’s get on a call and talk!