Comparison

HeySpex vs Obsidian.

Same files, different job. The vault is plain markdown with wikilinks, so Obsidian opens it natively. The difference is everything that happens around the files.

Shared ground

Everything Obsidian gets right, kept.

Plain markdown on your disk. Wikilinks between documents. Files a human can cold-read with no app installed, and a folder you can back up, grep, and diff like anything else in the repo. HeySpex did not reinvent that layer, because Obsidian proved it right.

plain markdown · [[wikilinks]] · your disk · cold-readable

The difference

A graph of notes versus the operating record of a build.

Obsidian

HeySpex

What a file is

A note. Every markdown file is the same kind of thing, and structure is whatever you impose on it.

A typed entity: task, epic, milestone, research, decision, lesson. Each type has a frontmatter schema, and every save is validated against it.

Task lifecycle

Checkboxes, plus plugins if you want more. A task is done when you check it.

A full lifecycle: open, in progress, in review, closed. Status changes gate what the scheduler will hand out next.

Multiple agents

No concept of agent presence. Two writers in one vault is a sync conflict waiting to happen.

A claim system. Agents claim work atomically, presence is visible on the Roadmap, and parallel sessions never stomp each other.

Retrieval

You search and browse. Finding the right note depends on remembering how you filed it.

Agents query over MCP. Author and retriever share the same conventions, so lexical retrieval is fast, exact, and deterministic.

Link integrity

Moves and renames break links. Community plugins exist to hunt down the breakage after the fact.

Self-healing wikilinks. Superseded specs carry their canonical successor in frontmatter and are flagged inline where referenced.

Plugins

Thousands of community plugins and a decade of themes and workflows. Obsidian wins this, comfortably.

Extensibility is newer and narrower: console endpoints, MCP tools, and skills. If you live on plugins, keep Obsidian open.

That last row is not false modesty. Obsidian is a mature, excellent personal knowledge tool, and nothing about HeySpex asks you to give it up.

Use both

Point Obsidian at the vault. Let HeySpex run it.

This is not an either-or. Open the vault in Obsidian to browse the graph, read specs on your tablet, or annotate by hand. HeySpex keeps doing its job underneath: settling plans, validating frontmatter, healing links, and handing agents the right context at the right moment. Obsidian to browse. HeySpex to build.

See what the workflows do with the files.

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