Does obsidian have AI?

Obsidian is all the rage. What does this mean? Well, first Notion should feel a little threatened; second, it means I’ve downloaded and tried it out.

From what I can tell, Obsidian has become indispensable for organizing ideas and thoughts, serving as your day-to-day note taker. It has branded itself as your ‘second-brain’, sitting alongside apps we’re familiar with like OneNote or Evernote. What’s special about Obsidian though is that it stores your notes, attachments, and plugins, as simple text documents. This means you can use Obsidian offline and have it sync documents using a storage of your choice such as local storage. But the true potential of Obsidian is unlocked when you combine its core functionalities with powerful community plugins and AI tools.

It’s rare for a tool to not have some sort of AI component now a days. So how come Obsidian doesn’t have a marketed AI feature? Because you can customize Obsidian to how you want it using plugins. You CAN use AI with it, but you don’t HAVE to.

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Core Plugins: The Foundation of Obsidian

Before diving into other plugins, it's essential to understand the core plugins that come pre-installed with Obsidian. These are fundamental to your experience, offering basic but crucial functionalities.

• Backlinks: This plugin shows a list of notes that link to the current note, allowing you to track relationships between ideas easily.
• Tag Pane: It provides an overview of all the tags in your vault, helping you manage and navigate through your notes with ease.
• Templates: This plugin allows you to create and insert pre-defined templates into your notes, saving time and ensuring consistency.

They are simple to use and highly effective in helping you maintain a well-structured knowledge base.

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Community Plugins: Supercharging Obsidian's Capabilities

Obsidian’s true power is unlocked when you start using community plugins. These plugins, created by other Obsidian users, add new features and capabilities that can drastically change how you interact with your notes.

Dataview is a famous plug in in the Obsidian scene. It’s known to be one of the most powerful and popular plugins in the Obsidian community. It allows you to query your notes like a database, creating dynamic lists, tables, and task views based on the metadata in your notes. Suppose you're a researcher with a large collection of notes on various topics. With Dataview, you can create a table that lists all your notes on a specific topic, showing their titles, dates, and any other metadata you’ve defined, all updated automatically as you add new notes.

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Shadow as a Plugin

Obsidian is more than just a note-taking app; it’s a dynamic, customizable tool that can truly become your “second brain.” While its core plugins provide a solid foundation for organizing and managing your notes, the real magic happens when you explore its vast ecosystem of community plugins and AI customizations like Shadow is doing. We saw that Obsidian was a note-taking heaven, and what do people in note taking heaven want? To be able to combine their work notes automatially. Whether you’re looking for a simple way to organize thoughts or seeking advanced functionalities such as dynamic data views and AI-driven insights, Obsidian offers flexibility and depth that make it a formidable contender in the realm of productivity tools.

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Here’s how to set it up:

1. Download both Shadow and Obsidian for your MacOS

2. Under the ‘Skills’ section of Shadow, go to transcripts and configure the settings so that your files will be saved in a folder that you will then connect with Obsidian

3. Now set up where you want Obsidian to open markdown files from.

And in just 3 easy steps, all your meeting notes can be managed on Obsidian after each meeting instantaneously.

Shadow doesn’t just take notes—it also automates follow-up tasks like drafting emails, updating project notes, and handling action items. All this happens automatically, so you can stay focused while Shadow handles the post-meeting workload.

It runs silently in the background, without any intrusive bots, and fits right into your Obsidian workflow. I’d love to hear any feedback or ideas for features you’d like to see. You can try Shadow out here: https://www.shadow.do/ and watch a quick demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydQsOFluGAU

If you’re looking for a way to manage your notes and tasks while keeping everything organized and accessible, I wholeheartedly recommend giving Obsidian a try. With the right setup, it can become an indispensable part of your workflow.

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