I had a great catch up with @hyl.st this afternoon talking about his Reams app. It has a full implementation of Automerge supporting many Obsidian features including Dataviews.
It also syncs files on disk in Markdown to Automerge and back, with a few edge cases that may or may not matter to you.
It’s in a private repo now, and ready for some alpha testers.
This part has no atproto crossover! You point it at an Automerge sync server or run your own (we have one as part of the commons computer stack). You can share a link to a page and collab with others running the same plugin.
Obsidian ATProto
@hyl.st has some early atproto stuff - like, sync your entire PDS locally, and reference things.
I suggested that this could be a great separate plugin, and also the chocolate to the Automerge peanut butter: fits great for those that want both, but also supports certain use cases that work alone.
We’ll come back to atproto.
Interop where?
Our general discussion was about how we interop and how we collab and why.
I’m having fun building features for my own website at https://bmannconsulting.com. It’s Obsidian editable markdown but goes into a build system and makes an Astro website with atmospheric features and integrations.
I’d love to collab with @hyl.st but I’m not the target for replacing my website custom build. I do want Automerge and some atproto features.
Automerge use cases for me are likely to be private and stay private. I can share meeting notes with others.
But I can also get edits before I publish something. Publish to atproto in what shape?
Digital Garden Note Shapes - maybe lichen wiki
There are a handful of folks thinking about standard site publishing out of their Obsidian. I have blog shaped content on my site, but I aggregate my writing of ATProto native tools with local blogs → https://bmannconsulting.com/blog/
For me, my notes pages are more like wikis. They are never “finished”, rather just some snapshot of a work in progress.
The thing I’ve seen that is the closest to the style and type of atmospheric content is https://lichen.wiki
I’ve kicked the tires on it a bit, there are groups, it uses Markdown, it’s really nice today already. No private data, but public wikis that are published and listed, and hidden ones that are on protocol but not publically online.
So I think I’d like to sync my Obsidian garden notes to Lichen. To optionally publish any note, or to sync any notes from the PDS like my blog example, to private spaces over time.
The diffs are the part where I have an issue: let’s say I edit a note that @hyl.st started. I don’t want just a diff in my PDS. I want the full content of the note after my edits, so I have a copy and don’t have to aggregate it myself.
Other use cases for this mode. So we have a folder aka a wiki like this Reams Testers one. Some of the content in here will be by @hyl.st, some by me, some by you all. As we edit and collab - I’d like to choose which version to pin. I’m fine if someone edits my note - but on my site, I want to pin the full content version of the note that I want.
Maybe we store diff AND optional full content? @juprodh.me I really have no idea here.
Multiplayer collab with Automerge, to published lichen.wiki page and back again.
Private Spaces with HappyView
@hyl.st is already using HappyView for his backend, for synching, and with an eye towards private data and especially groups.
Maybe folders in obsidian are different kinds of content collections, groups, spaces? The interface to lean into Obsidan may very well be a thing. We have to experiment.
Next
Leave a comment if you want alpha access to Obsidian Automerge.
Let’s all experiment with lichen.wiki? I’ll do it on my codebase, @hyl.st will do it in his, and we’ll see what it feels like and what collab through a lexicon works. Leave a comment if you’re coming along for the ride. We’ll use the Reams Testers Wiki as our test space.
