OzBrain vs Obsidian
Updated
The short answer
OzBrain is a hosted brain that Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, and Cursor read and write through one connector, kept coherent by staged writes and contradiction checks, and shareable with the people you work with. Obsidian is a local markdown vault built for one person’s own thinking. If the goal is agents that know what you know, OzBrain does that job, and it imports your vault and exports plain markdown, so switching risks nothing.
You already have a system: years of notes, links you curated, a structure that maps how you think. What changed is the audience. Your agents do real work for you now, and a vault was built for exactly one reader, you.
Free plan includes 50 articles. Vault import in, markdown export out.
Side by side
| Dimension | OzBrain | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|
| Agent accessHow Claude, ChatGPT, and your editor reach what you know. | One connector, one sign-in | Plugins you wire per agent |
| ReachWhere the knowledge is available while you work. Sync covers your devices; agents still need plugins. | Every agent, every device | Local (+ Sync add-on) |
| Who can use itA brain grant puts the same knowledge behind another person’s agents. Sync shared vaults share notes, not agent access. | You and anyone you grant | You (+ Sync shared vaults) |
| Staying trueWhat notices contradictions and stale facts. | Checked on every write | Your discipline |
| OwnershipBoth sides pass this one. Your knowledge stays plain markdown. | Markdown export anytime | Markdown on disk |
What happens when your agents need what you know?
Connect a vault to agents and you become the integration. Obsidian ships no first-party agent access, so it takes a community REST plugin that serves only while the app runs, or a filesystem MCP server per machine, with each agent configured separately and every piece yours to maintain. OzBrain connects Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, and Cursor with one URL and one sign-in.
Wired or not, a vault only stores. Backlinks relate notes without checking them: two notes can contradict each other for a year, a note that stopped being true looks as fresh as the day you wrote it, and whatever an agent learns in a session lands wherever it happens to write. OzBrain routes every write to the article it belongs to, checks it against what the brain already holds, pauses contradictions for you to resolve, and records which agent wrote what, and when.
The deeper limit is agent access, not sync. Obsidian Sync can put a vault on your other devices and share notes with people; it still does not put that vault behind Claude, ChatGPT, or your editor without plugins you wire and maintain. OzBrain scales across everywhere you work and everyone you work with: the same brain behind every agent on every device, shareable with a cofounder, a client, or a collaborator, read-only or read and write. Their agents get the context too, and provenance shows who added what.
Import the vault tonight and your agents stop working from memory.
Import my vaultWhat the vault does well
Local files, offline forever, a plugin for anything, and total control over structure. For a private thinking space those are real advantages, and we built around the same instinct: OzBrain exports your entire brain as plain markdown, anytime, because knowledge you cannot take with you is knowledge you do not own.
Keep writing in Obsidian if writing there is how you think. The brain takes nothing from the vault; it takes the job the vault was never built for.
Your vault comes with you
The Obsidian import brings the whole vault across: every note lands as an article, routed, linked, and checked against the rest as it arrives. The import doubles as the cleanup pass your vault never got, because years of quiet contradictions surface on the way in.
The door swings both ways. Full markdown export, links intact, whenever you want it, including after you cancel. The archive you spent years building stays yours in the format you built it in.
The vault keeps your thinking. The brain feeds your agents.
Most vault owners who switch run both: Obsidian stays the place you think in longhand, OzBrain becomes what your agents read and write while you work. When a vault note becomes something agents should act on, ask your agent to stage it and it joins the brain, checked and routed.
Setup is one sign-in and a connector approval per agent. Tonight your agents can open a conversation already knowing your stack, your clients, and your decisions. Sharing ships with Pro and Max.
Common questions
Can I import my whole Obsidian vault?
Yes, easily. The import takes your vault and brings every note across as an article: routed, linked, and checked against the rest as it lands. Years of notes arrive already organized for agents, with the duplicates and contradictions that accumulated along the way surfaced instead of buried. Day one, your brain knows everything the vault knew.
Can I export my brain back into Obsidian?
Yes. The export is plain markdown with links intact, so it opens directly as a vault, and delete means deleted on our side. Both doors stay open, which is why trying the brain risks nothing.
Why not point an MCP server at my vault instead?
That gives agents raw file access and stops there. No routing, so writes land wherever the agent guesses; no contradiction checks, so a wrong note spreads; no provenance, so you cannot tell which agent wrote what. The librarian work is the product, and raw file access skips it.
Can I share my brain with someone else?
Yes, and this is where the vault cannot follow. Grant another account read or read and write access, and their agents read the brain exactly as yours do. Two people writing to the same article resolve through the staged write protocol, and every version records its author. Sharing ships with Pro and Max.
Does OzBrain replace my plugins?
It replaces the wiring plugins, the ones that connect the vault to agents and are the first casualties of a major Obsidian update. Writing and thinking plugins keep their job, because the vault keeps its job. The connection your agents depend on stops being something you maintain.