Files.md: A minimalist, local-first Markdown alternative to Obsidian

Files.md is an open-source personal knowledge management tool built around plain Markdown files stored locally, pitched as a deliberately stripped-down alternative to Obsidian. It runs as a browser-based PWA with no build system, optional self-hosted sync via a single Go binary (or third-party services like iCloud and Dropbox), and a Telegram chatbot for capturing notes on the go. The author, who has been developing it for five years, emphasizes that files never leave the user’s device and that the codebase is small enough for a single developer or LLM to hold entirely in context.

The project’s philosophy pushes back against the ‘second brain’ culture of plugins, templates, and AI workflows, arguing that elaborate PKM systems become a form of deferred thinking rather than actual understanding. The recommended workflow is intentionally spare: no folder structure to start, one idea per note, manual linking with [[wikilinks]], and regular revisiting to surface cross-domain connections. Bundled Go utilities handle housekeeping tasks like converting wikilinks to standard Markdown, generating backlinks, and shifting journal timestamps.

For a technical audience, the notable design choices are the radical minimalism — vendored dependencies, no build pipeline, an explicit goal that index.html still opens cleanly in ten years — and the LLM-friendly file scheme, with a published llms.txt that can be dropped into CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md so agents can navigate the structure.