With Obsidian
Point Graphite at your Obsidian vault.
Keep Obsidian. Graphite's Mac app opens the same folder, as it is, and does what Obsidian leaves to you: it files what's loose, asks you to teach a note back, and drafts from your own words. Both apps work on the same files.
What it does
What Obsidian leaves to you.
Each works with the AI you choose — your own key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or another major provider — and sends nothing until you ask, or until you turn filing on.
It files what's loose.
Notes at your vault's top level, and in the few top-level folders Graphite keeps for itself — Inbox and Notes among them — wait in its Inbox. Turn on File my Inbox in Settings → AI, and Graphite files each one into a project or a folder you've set up in Graphite, by writing one line of frontmatter, which Obsidian shows as a property. The file stays where it is. Each act goes in the Logbook, with Undo, and a note in any folder of your own is never filed.
It asks you to teach it back.
Teach it back, in Actions beside a note, asks you to explain it with the note out of sight, to a curious student who asks why. It marks what you say against your own notes, never against what the model knows, and what you can't explain yet goes under What's missing.
It drafts from your own words.
Draft from your notes, in a note's right-click menu, arranges a first draft from your own sentences, with the gaps marked, as a new note. Anything it can't find in your notes, it leaves out. What's missing, beside every note, lists the questions your notes don't answer yet.
Tested
What it keeps exactly as Obsidian wrote it.
Tested on 9 November 2026, on Obsidian's own Help vault (179 notes) and Steph Ango's published vault (103 notes), and on a vault of our own holding every syntax Obsidian writes.
- Opening a note never changes it. All 299 notes in the vaults we tested came back byte for byte: Graphite writes a file only when you change it.
- Every [[link]] Obsidian writes — by title, with an alias, a heading or a block, with a folder path or a .md ending — leads where it does in Obsidian. When two notes share a title, the shorter path wins, as it does there. A link in a table, written [[Trip\|the trip]], opens its note too; from the Mac app's next update it also counts as a backlink.
- Renaming a note in Graphite rewrites every [[link]] to it. We renamed 92 notes across the two published vaults, and no link was lost. A link in a table, [[Trip\|the trip]], is rewritten too from the Mac app's next update; until then, rename that note in Obsidian.
- Images and PDFs show where you put them — ![[photo.png|300]], ![[scan.pdf]],  — found wherever the vault keeps them.
- Properties stay exactly as you wrote them, every one. Tags, in properties or inline, are the note's tags.
- Callouts, ==highlights== and mermaid diagrams are drawn. A callout type of your own is kept, and drawn as a note.
- Hidden folders — .obsidian, .trash, .git — are never listed, watched or written.
- Obsidian keeps working: Graphite picks up a change Obsidian makes, and Obsidian picks up Graphite's.
Not yet
What it shows as text, and what it doesn't do.
- Maths, footnotes, block ids, %%comments%% and Dataview or Tasks queries are shown as you wrote them, and never changed.
- A note embedded in another, ![[Note]], shows as a link to it, not its words.
- SVG files, audio, video, canvases and bases show by name, and are left alone.
- A markdown link to a note, [Plan](Plan.md), is shown as a link, but it isn't a backlink or on the Map yet, and isn't rewritten when that note is renamed. Opening the note with ⌘-click comes with the Mac app's next update.
- When you edit a paragraph, a list or a table, that block is written back in Graphite's markdown — a * bullet as -, a tab before a nested item as two spaces. Obsidian reads it the same, and nothing you didn't touch changes. Two exceptions until the Mac app's next update: in a note with no last line break that ends in a to-do list, an edit writes the whole note back that way, and a link written in <angle brackets> loses them when its line is edited.
- Obsidian's plugins don't run in Graphite. Its Mac app is the only one that opens a vault — there's no Windows, Linux or phone app — and it has no sync of its own.
Folders
Your folders, and the Inbox.
Your folders stay where they are, and Graphite never moves a note out of one. From the Mac app's next update, the sidebar lists them under On disk, each opening the notes in it; until then, Find a note (⌘O) and All Notes reach every note.
Graphite keeps a few top-level folder names for itself — Notes, Inbox, Receipts and Published, in any case. A note at your vault's top level, or in one of those, is in its Inbox until it's in a project or a folder of Graphite's. If your vault keeps hundreds of notes at its top level, as Obsidian does unless you choose a folder for new notes, they'll all be there — and turning on File my Inbox sends each one's title and first lines to your AI provider, to file it.
New notes you make in Graphite go into its Notes folder.
Everything Graphite sends, and when, is said in full on Your files, and what Graphite sends.
Try it
Try it on a copy first.
- Duplicate your vault in Finder.
- Download Graphite for Mac (macOS 13 Ventura or later, on Apple silicon), choose File → Open folder as notebook…, and pick the copy.
- Open the copy in Obsidian too, and work in both.
- Compare the copy with your vault — with a diff tool, or git if your vault is in one — before you open the real one.
Graphite isn't made by Obsidian, isn't an Obsidian plugin, and doesn't need one: it opens the folder. Before you choose, the Obsidian comparison says when Obsidian alone is the better choice, and the Obsidian AI guide compares the other ways to add AI to a vault.