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kepano
@stephango.com
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making @obsidian.md
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kepano @stephango.com · Nov 26
File over app · 2023
stephango.com/file-over-app
File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom. File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data. In the fullness of time, the files you create are more important than the tools you use to create them. Apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to last. The ancient temples of Egypt contain hieroglyphs that were chiseled in stone thousands of years ago. The ideas hieroglyphs convey are more important than the type of chisel that was used to carve them. The world is filled with ideas from generations past, transmitted through many mediums, from clay tablets to manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, and tapestries. These artifacts are objects that you can touch, hold, own, store, preserve, and look at. To read something written on paper all you need is eyeballs. Today, we are creating innumerable digital artifacts, but most of these artifacts are out of our control. They are stored on servers, in databases, gated behind an internet connection, and login to a cloud service. Even the files on your hard drive use proprietary formats that make them incompatible with older systems and other tools. Paraphrasing something I wrote recently: "If you want your writing to still be readable on a computer from the 2060s or 2160s, it’s important that your notes can be read on a computer from the 1960s." You should want the files you create to be durable, not only for posterity, but also for your future self. You never know when you might want to go back to something you created years or decades ago. Don’t lock your data into a format you can’t retrieve. These days I write using an app I help make called Obsidian, but it’s a delusion to think it will last forever. The app will eventually become obsolete. It’s the plain text files I create that are designed to last. Who knows if anyone will want to read them besides me, but future me is enough of an audience to make it worthwhile.
stephango.com
What do I mean when I say everything in Obsidian should feel instantaneous?

No more than 0.1 seconds.

The target was established in 1968 by Robert Miller and well described in 1993 by Jakob Nielsen here:
0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result. 1.0 second is about the limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data. 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user's attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect.
December 26, 2025 at 1:29 PM
stephango.com
Performance is design, and every millisecond counts.

Every update in 2025 trimmed Obsidian's load speed. This is quite complex given the number of different configurations and operating systems Obsidian supports.
December 25, 2025 at 2:46 AM
stephango.com
40
December 19, 2025 at 10:45 AM
stephango.com
what's one improvement you'd like to see in @obsidian.md in 2026?
December 16, 2025 at 9:48 PM
stephango.com
Obsidian on mobile is getting so fast and smooth.
obsidian.md Obsidian @obsidian.md · 16d
Obsidian 1.11.0 (early access) introduces widgets and a new mobile design.

You can now instantly access Obsidian from your lock screen, home screen, control center, Shortcuts, and Siri.

The new design gives more space to your notes, and helps you quickly navigate your vault.
December 10, 2025 at 9:09 PM
stephango.com
if you want to watch me ramble for three hours about furniture design, Winamp skins, chocolate chip cookies, and other things:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8ve...
The Other Stuff #28 — Kepano: The Interconnectedness of Everything
YouTube video by The Other Stuff Podcast
www.youtube.com
December 10, 2025 at 5:10 PM
stephango.com
Thank you Paul Wieland for making ratgdo... I can actually open my garage door without having it connect to the internet thanks to this gizmo

it's seems rather dorky for a New York Times front page article, but hopefully it speaks to growing awareness for local-first software
A few years ago, Paul Wieland, a 44-year-old information technology professional living in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, was wrapping up a home renovation when he ran into a hiccup. He wanted to be able to control his new garage door with his smartphone. But the options available, including a product called MyQ, required connecting to a company’s internet servers. He believed a “smart” garage door should operate only over a local Wi-Fi network to protect a home’s privacy, so he started building his own system to plug into his garage door. By 2022, he had developed a prototype, which he named RATGDO, for Rage Against the Garage Door Opener. He had hoped to sell 100 of his new gadgets just to recoup expenses, but he ended up selling tens of thousands. That’s because MyQ’s maker did what a number of other consumer device manufacturers have done over the last few years, much to the frustration of their customers: It changed the device, making it both less useful and more expensive to operate.
December 5, 2025 at 10:44 PM
stephango.com
it's that time of year again
stephango.com kepano @stephango.com · Dec 4
Each year I ask myself these 40 questions.

This will be my eleventh year. It's still one of my favorite rituals. It helps me see how phases of my life wax and wane.

Each year new translations come in. We're up to 30 languages! Thank you to all the contributors 🥰

stephango.com/40-questions
1. What did you do this year that you’d never done before? 2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions? 3. Did anyone close to you give birth? 4. Did anyone close to you die? 5. What cities/states/countries did you visit? 6. What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year? 7. What date(s) from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? 9. What was your biggest failure? 10. What other hardships did you face? 11. Did you suffer illness or injury? 12. What was the best thing you bought? 13. Whose behavior merited celebration? 14. Whose behavior made you appalled? 15. Where did most of your money go? 16. What did you get really, really, really excited about? 17. What song will always remind you of this year? 18. Compared to this time last year, are you: happier or sadder? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer? 19. What do you wish you’d done more of? 20. What do you wish you’d done less of? 21. How are you spending the holidays? 22. Did you fall in love this year? 23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? 24. What was your favorite show? 25. What was the best book you read? 26. What was your greatest musical discovery of the year? 27. What was your favorite film? 28. What was your favorite meal? 29. What did you want and get? 30. What did you want and not get? 31. What did you do on your birthday? 32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? 33. How would you describe your personal fashion this year? 34. What kept you sane? 35. Which celebrity/public figure did you admire the most? 36. What political issue stirred you the most? 37. Who did you miss? 38. Who was the best new person you met? 39. What valuable life lesson did you learn this year? 40. What is a quote that sums up your year?
November 30, 2025 at 5:47 PM
stephango.com
making local files easy to adopt is filled with agony, luckily I like pain
obsidian.md Obsidian @obsidian.md · Nov 22
You can now convert your Notion pages and databases to durable, private, local files.

Your data, offline, forever, for free.
November 22, 2025 at 9:33 PM
stephango.com
one strategy is to keep doing your thing much longer than anyone thought you would
November 19, 2025 at 2:31 PM
stephango.com
oops I missed the outage, I was too busy writing in Obsidian
November 18, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Reposted by kepano
stephango.com
computers started local-first and will go back to local-first
January 22, 2025 at 7:32 PM
stephango.com
This is really nifty if you have a bunch of data in Google Sheets or Airtable that you want to bring into Obsidian
obsidian.md Obsidian @obsidian.md · Nov 12
Obsidian Importer now lets you generate Markdown files from a CSV.

It converts thousands records in seconds and automatically generates a Base that you can use to explore and edit the data.
November 12, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Reposted by kepano
obsidian.md
Obsidian 1.10 is now available! The mobile app now launches A LOT faster.

We've also made many improvements to Bases with new list views, map views, groups, summaries, and APIs to create your own views.
November 11, 2025 at 6:29 PM
stephango.com
we used offcuts of wood from the kitchen project to make these napkin rings for our wedding guests
November 9, 2025 at 5:21 PM
stephango.com
The kitchen!
November 8, 2025 at 7:54 PM
stephango.com
When you email issues to Obsidian Entertainment (the video game company) their AI support hallucinates and tells you to email Obsidian (the note-taking company) instead.

If the reward function is to reduce the number of touches in a support ticket, this is one way to do it.
Thanks so much for reaching out and for the kind words about the game, we're thrilled you're loving Outer Worlds 2! It's great to hear you're even trying to contribute feedback on the issue tracker. You've run right into a common security feature where disabling 2FA also requires a current code to prove you're the account owner making the change. Since your issue is with the Obsidian account system (for the issue tracker) and involves account security, this is something our specialized account security team needs to handle directly. They're the only ones who can verify your ownership and safely disable the authenticator app link without a current code. Please email their dedicated support channel directly right now at support@obsidian.md. - In your email, explain exactly what you told me: you lost access to your authenticator app, you used a backup code to log in, but you can't disable 2FA because it still asks for an authenticator code. - Mention that you can provide any proof of account ownership they need. The support team at that address is equipped to work through the necessary identity verification steps to get that 2FA disabled for you.
November 3, 2025 at 10:16 PM
stephango.com
somehow @capt.dev revived this Winamp 5 skin I made 21 years ago
October 25, 2025 at 4:18 PM
stephango.com
Launch time should be noticeably faster if you have a large vault, especially on older Android devices.

For me it's under 200ms on iOS with 17k files.
obsidian.md Obsidian @obsidian.md · Oct 21
Obsidian 1.10.1 (early access) is now available to Catalyst members for desktop and mobile.

The mobile app now launches significantly faster. You can now edit the last opened file while the rest of the app loads in the background.
October 21, 2025 at 10:51 PM
stephango.com
Use the saw, fear the saw
stephango.com/saw
Use the saw, fear the saw When I learned to use a table saw, my teacher impressed upon me that the machine wants to cut fingers. Fear the saw! Powerful tools can do powerful things. If you want to make handmade wooden furniture you must cut wood. Your desire to have limbs and your desire to have furniture are not at odds if you learn to use tools safely. There are table saws that will stop at the touch of a finger, but I don’t know of any chainsaw that won’t cut an arm. There is a limit to how safe a tool can be before its function is crippled. We should not stop making powerful tools because they are dangerous. Rather, we should empower people to use powerful tools safely. I use the saw, I fear the saw. I have handmade furniture, and I have all my limbs.
October 20, 2025 at 5:55 PM
stephango.com
my greatest fear came true, turns out those home pizza ovens are amazing and you can have excellent pizza whenever you want

(okay, not the most circular, but this was my first attempt!)
October 7, 2025 at 1:48 AM
stephango.com
Just updated my vault template to show how I use the new Maps feature for Obsidian Bases. Super useful for travel planning.
Screenshot of Obsidian showing a map of Taipei made with Bases
October 6, 2025 at 7:40 PM
stephango.com
So much good stuff in this update.
obsidian.md Obsidian @obsidian.md · Oct 1
Obsidian 1.10.0 (early access) is now available to Catalyst members with tons of improvements for Bases!

- New List view
- New Map view an official open source plugin
- Bases API for views
- Group results by property

Many new table view features: keyboard nav, copy/paste, summarize, undo
October 1, 2025 at 10:05 PM
stephango.com
Since the start we've tried to avoid dependencies in Obsidian. It takes a bit longer to add some features, but it reduces the risk of supply chain attacks, and gives us more control over performance.
September 19, 2025 at 5:11 PM
stephango.com
On agents and Obsidian
AI agents built into cloud apps will always be sub-par compared to state of the art agents that you can use with Obsidian. This is because your Obsidian data is in your control, in plain text formats that are ideal for LLMs to process. You can choose to run any of the best-in-class agents and AI tools: Claude, Gemini, OpenAI Codex, etc. You also have the choice to run local models and privacy-preserving options. Or you can use none of these and enjoy not seeing sparkly AI buttons everywhere. Remember that cloud-based note-taking apps are not end-to-end encrypted. This is inherently less secure, open to breaches, and allows companies to make your private thoughts part of their training set. Obsidian is not working on adding agents because we don't have to. We'll let the AI labs focus on that. We're 4 developers and our focus is on making great editing tools for plain text Markdown files that are always in your control.
September 19, 2025 at 3:03 PM