Leonardo Rincón · Co-founder, SolidAI Your notes, your server, your AI — nothing leaves your hands.
What it is
Obsidian is a note-taking app for your desktop and phone
You write notes as plain text (Markdown) files — no proprietary format
Everything lives in a folder on your own device, called a vault
[[Links]] between notes turn your vault into a network of ideas
Free to use, with plugins that add sync, publishing, and even AI
Second Brain.md
# Second Brain
- Capture ideas in **Markdown**
- Connect them: [[Zettelkasten]]
- Tag what matters: #idea #project> Your notes. Your files. Your server.
The foundation
Why Obsidian
Notes are plain Markdown files in a folder — no database, no lock-in
Local-first: works offline, on every platform, forever
[[Links]] + graph view turn notes into a network, not a pile
Huge plugin ecosystem — the one that matters tonight: Self-hosted LiveSync
The problem
One brain, many devices
Phone on the tram, laptop at work, PC at home — the vault must be everywhere
Official Obsidian Sync is great… but your notes live on someone else's cloud
Our rule at SolidAI: the source of truth stays on hardware we control
Answer: a $6/month VPS and two containers
Architecture
The whole thing fits in one diagram
Layer 1 · Sync
CouchDB + Self-hosted LiveSync
One CouchDB container behind HTTPS — that's the entire sync server
The LiveSync community plugin syncs every device in near-real-time
Phone note → CouchDB → server vault → laptop, in seconds
New device? Install plugin, point it at the URL, Fetch from remote. Done.
End-to-end encryption available if you want zero-trust hosting
Layer 2 · Access anywhere
Obsidian in the browser — as a switch
Full desktop Obsidian (graph view included) streamed to any browser, running next to the data. Off by default; two words turn it on.
# "turn on obsidian" (I say it in Telegram, my agent runs it)
docker compose up -d obsidian # → https://obsidian.██████.com# "turn off obsidian" — sync never notices
docker compose stop obsidian
Costs ~1 GB RAM only while it runs. CouchDB and the webhook never blink.
Layer 3 · localAI
An AI that lives with your brain
Claude Code runs on the VPS, right next to the vault
I talk to it from Telegram — it manages the whole stack for me
"turn on obsidian" · "check the backups" · "what did the team report today?"
It keeps its own persistent memory in Markdown too — agents need second brains as well
The key piece: agents don't just read the vault. They write to it.