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🧠 Research & Foundations phase — building the KB from the ground up. See the roadmap →

2026-04-13 · Vault vision mining

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What we mined

Section titled “What we mined”

Two files from the local Obsidian research vault:

  1. Contributable Obsidian Wiki/Contributable Obsidian Wiki.md — the core vision doc, dated April 2024, updated through Dec 2024
  2. Obsidian as a CMS/Obsidian as a CMS.md — strategic positioning + ecosystem survey, dated Dec 2024

The user’s original dream (verbatim synthesis)

Section titled “The user’s original dream (verbatim synthesis)”

From the vault, paraphrased into one coherent vision:

Go to someone’s Obsidian website, click “edit page”, and immediately edit the content right there. Click submit, and it generates a PR and runs GitHub Actions. You can also edit by cloning the repo into Obsidian or from GitHub directly — 3+ ways to edit. You can “edit with someone” for live anonymous collaborative editing. Each page shows contributors with photos and a contributors page. Obsidian community plugins (Dataview, linting, attachment management) can run in multiple environments — not just in Obsidian locally, but also in GitHub Actions, serverless functions, and client-side CMS apps.

Key elements:

  • 3+ contribution paths: inline on-site editing, clone vault to Obsidian, GitHub UI/dev
  • Live anonymous collaboration: secure ephemeral editing sessions
  • Contributor attribution: photos, contributor pages, visible credit
  • Plugin execution across environments: the “hardest layer” — community plugins running in GitHub Actions, serverless, client-side
  • Open Authoring: Decap CMS Open Authoring for zero-git PR contribution

The hardest unsolved problem (from the vault) — now potentially solved

Section titled “The hardest unsolved problem (from the vault) — now potentially solved”

“The hardest layer here would be creating an engine where some community plugins can run on multiple platforms (GitHub Actions, custom serverless functions, client-side with a custom CMS web-app, etc.)”

The user explicitly identified this in the vault. At the time of writing (April 2024), Obsidian plugins were designed for the Electron desktop app only. Making them run in non-Obsidian contexts required workarounds.

Major update (2025-2026): Obsidian has since released:

  • Obsidian CLI — official CLI shipping with Obsidian 1.12 (Early Access). “Anything you can do in Obsidian you can do from the command line.” Enables scripting, automation, and integration with external tools.
  • Obsidian Headless — official headless client for Sync and Publish. Vaults can be synced/published from CLI without the desktop app.
  • obsidianless — community tool to run the full Obsidian CLI on headless Linux servers (no monitor, no subscription needed).

This potentially dissolves the hardest problem. If community plugins can load and execute via the CLI in a GitHub Action or Docker container, the entire “plugin execution across environments” challenge becomes an integration problem instead of a from-scratch build.

Open question for R04: do community plugins (Dataview, linting, attachment management) actually load and execute in headless/CLI mode? Or is CLI limited to core Obsidian features? Needs hands-on testing.

This maps directly to R04 (Plugin execution abstraction) in the Roadmap.

What the vault already decided (prior state)

Section titled “What the vault already decided (prior state)”
DecisionStateConfidence
3 contribution paths (inline, Obsidian+Git, GitHub direct)✅ Stated as visionHigh
Decap CMS as the CMS layer (specifically Open Authoring)✅ Named explicitlyMedium — not fully evaluated against alternatives
Live anonymous collab (Peerdraft or similar)✅ DesiredLow — no implementation research done
Contributor attribution (photos + contributor pages)✅ DesiredLow — no implementation research
Plugin execution across environments⚠️ Identified as hardOpen — no solution proposed
Obsidian Publish as the initial publishing base⚠️ Early thinkingSuperseded — Astro+Starlight is now the chosen SSG

What still needs investigation

Section titled “What still needs investigation”
  1. Identity (R01): the vault describes a SPECIFIC tool (contributable Obsidian wiki) but the current positioning is GENERAL (“the contributable wiki, reinvented”). Which is it? The answer shapes everything.
  2. CMS choice (R02): the vault names Decap CMS but doesn’t compare it against Sveltia, Tina, Emdash, Pages CMS, or Strapi in depth. Need a real evaluation.
  3. Plugin abstraction (R04): the hardest problem is stated but not explored. Needs a dedicated deep-dive.
  4. Collab model (R05): the vault vision includes live collab but the current architecture assumes git-only. Need to decide if v1 includes real-time or defers it.
  5. Inline editing UX (R10): the dream is “click edit and edit right there.” What does that technically mean? Decap widget, TinaCMS inline, custom BlockSuite/Tiptap editor?
Section titled “Curated links from these documents”

Implications for cyberbaser

Section titled “Implications for cyberbaser”

The vault vision is more ambitious than what we currently describe on the docs site. The current site says “three contribution paths + translation layer + round-trip fidelity.” The vault adds: live anonymous collab, contributor attribution with photos, and plugin execution across environments.

Decision needed (R01): is v1 the FULL vision (including live collab + plugin abstraction) or is v1 the MVP (three paths + translation layer + CMS contribution) with the rest deferred?

Section titled “Related”