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Obsidian CEO on Community First Productivity Tools

Obsidian CEO Steph Ango says the secret to the app’s growth is not flashy AI but a community-driven, privacy-first approach: local Markdown files, an extensible plugin ecosystem, and a tiny, mission-focused team. Obsidian monetizes through sync, publishing, and donations while deliberately leaving AI mostly to opt-in plugins.

Published August 18, 2025 at 12:12 PM EDT in Software Development

Obsidian’s CEO makes the case for community over AI

In a wide-ranging Decoder interview, Obsidian CEO Steph Ango explained why his note-taking app doubles down on local Markdown files, extensibility, and community rather than racing to bake AI into the core product. The result: a small, profitable team building a durable tool for personal knowledge work.

Ango, who joined Obsidian as a superfan-turned-CEO, describes the app as a personal Wikipedia where notes link to each other and live as plain Markdown files on your device. That architecture prioritizes ownership, longevity, and offline access — not metrics-driven engagement.

Plugins are central to Obsidian’s growth. By exposing accessible JavaScript-based APIs, the team let community developers build thousands of niche features. That keeps the core app lean while letting power users extend functionality — and it also created a hiring pipeline: popular plugin authors often join the company.

  • Why Obsidian’s approach works: modularity, privacy, and community-driven features.

Ango is explicit about trade-offs. Obsidian doesn’t track usage or count users; it refuses analytic hooks that would compromise privacy. That means the team often doesn’t know retention metrics, but it preserves trust and user control — a strategic choice rather than an oversight.

Revenue comes from a few focused streams: Obsidian Sync (encrypted cross-device syncing), Publish (site generation from notes), and donation/pro-support programs. With a seven-person core team, those lines of income keep the company profitable without pressure to over-monetize.

  • Primary revenue sources: Sync, Publish, Catalyst/donations.

On AI, Obsidian has a cautious, principle-driven stance. The product itself contains minimal built-in AI; instead, AI capabilities appear via plugins and an external Web Clipper 'Interpreter' that runs outside the core app. Ango says any deep integration would need to be private and consistent with the manifesto.

That plugin-first approach has two implications: innovation accelerates (AI tools are already being built by the community), and governance challenges grow — Obsidian’s small team must review an accelerating flood of third-party code and decide which capabilities to absorb into core.

Ango also discussed Bases, a new feature that layers metadata and database-like views onto existing notes. It’s an example of building higher-level structure without abandoning the file-first philosophy: visualize and manage collections of notes while keeping the underlying Markdown intact.

For product and engineering leaders, Obsidian’s story is a practical reminder: privacy, composability, and a strong developer community can be a sustainable alternative to an AI arms race. Small, focused teams can deliver durable value by aligning architecture, revenue, and community incentives.

Ango admits Obsidian might not last forever — interfaces will evolve — but he bets that durable, portable file formats like Markdown will remain valuable. For now, Obsidian’s mix of local-first design, plugin-driven growth, and privacy-focused monetization offers a distinct path in the crowded productivity market.

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