use cases / obsidian-users

tnotes for Obsidian users

Open your Obsidian vault in the terminal with tnotes: same folders, [[wikilinks]] and #tags, no plugins, canvas or properties. Run both on one directory.

The problem

You are in a terminal most of the day and your notes are in an Electron window. Alt-tabbing to Obsidian to check a runbook or jot a line is a small cost, paid often. Over ssh it is not possible at all. What you want is a way to read and edit the same vault from the shell, without converting anything and without losing Obsidian for the days you want the graph view.

An Obsidian vault is a directory of Markdown files, and that is exactly what tnotes opens. Nothing is imported or exported; both programs read and write the same .md files.

Setup in three steps

Install tnotes (getting started).
Add the vault as a root. tnotes ~/Obsidian/Work saves it to the config and opens it; or write the config directly:

roots = ["~/Obsidian/Work", "~/Obsidian/Personal"]

[editor]
template = "# "

Leave .obsidian/ where it is. Dot-prefixed files and directories are ignored, so Obsidian’s configuration folder, its workspace state and plugin data never appear in the tnotes list.

Set template = "# " (the default) so new notes begin with a heading. tnotes names the file after the first line, so # Postgres failover becomes postgres-failover.md, which Obsidian then shows under that filename.

What carries over

Folders. Obsidian folders are directories on disk and the tnotes tree shows the same hierarchy. m in the list moves a note between them.
[[Wikilinks]]. Obsidian’s default link format is [[Note title]]. tnotes resolves the same syntax by title (case-insensitive), then by file stem, completes it after [[ with tab, follows it with alt+enter or ctrl+click, and creates a missing target on follow, as Obsidian does. When you rename a note in tnotes, [[old title]] is rewritten to [[new title]] in every other note, matching Obsidian’s automatic link update.
#tags. Inline tags are parsed from the text, including nested ones with a slash such as #inbox/to-read, the same form Obsidian uses. ctrl+click on a tag filters the list to it.
Backlinks. alt+enter on a line without a link opens a backlinks overlay; the status bar shows the count as ↩ N.
Checkboxes. - [ ] items toggle with alt+x or a click.

Daily workflow

Keep Obsidian open on the desktop and tnotes in a tmux pane. Both watch the directory. A note you edit in Obsidian reloads in a clean tnotes tab, cursor position kept; a note you edit in tnotes is written atomically after autosave_ms of idle time, so Obsidian never sees a half-written file. If both sides have unsaved changes to the same note, tnotes keeps its own text as name (conflict <time>).md rather than overwriting Obsidian’s save. Conflict files are listed as normal notes, so you see them.

For quick capture from a shell, skip the TUI:

tnotes new "Standup 2026-09-22" --tag work --folder Meetings
tnotes append standup-2026-09-22 "- [ ] ask Ann about the migration window"

The note appears in Obsidian’s file explorer as soon as it is written.

What does not carry over

Be clear about this before moving a heavy vault:

Plugins. tnotes has none, community or core. Dataview queries, Templater templates and everything else a plugin renders stay in Obsidian. Their source files remain in the vault; tnotes lists the .md ones as plain text.
Canvas. .canvas files are JSON, not notes. tnotes shows one .md file per note and nothing else.
Properties. Obsidian stores properties as a YAML block at the top of the file, including tags: and aliases:. tnotes has no properties view; its tags are #hashtags parsed from the text. It also takes the first line of the file as the title and names the file after it, which matters for notes whose first line is ---.
Link forms beyond [[Title]]. Heading links ([[Note#Heading]]), block references ([[Note#^id]]), display text ([[Note|text]]) and embeds (![[Note]]) are Obsidian syntax with no documented tnotes counterpart.
Graph view, Obsidian Sync, Publish, mobile apps. None of these exist in tnotes. The vault stays syncable by Obsidian Sync, Syncthing or git because tnotes writes nothing beside your notes.