Obsidian is already offline-first, no forced AI, with a $50/YEAR commercial licence and a huge plugin ecosystem, making this 'Obsidian but $50/month'. It's a pure vitamin: anyone scared of AI just turns off sync or uses an existing local editor. This matches the 'X but better designed' tarpit pattern. Obsidian already offers a completely offline, local-markdown editor for free with a massive plugin ecosystem, and users who hate AI will simply use that instead of paying for a barebones alternative.
Quiet Notes
KILL · 39/100. Stress-tested and killed on day one.
Obsidian is already offline-first, no forced AI, with a $50/YEAR commercial licence and a huge plugin ecosystem, making this 'Obsidian but $50/month'. It's a pure vitamin: anyone scared of AI just turns off sync or uses an existing local editor. This matches the 'X but better designed' tarpit pattern. Obsidian already offers a completely offline, local-markdown editor for free with a massive plugin ecosystem, and users who hate AI will simply use that instead of paying for a barebones alternative.
Fifty legal/medical practices prepay $50 for early access on the landing page AND don't demand a signed BAA you can't provide; without the prepay, anti-AI sentiment is free to express and worth nothing. A legal or healthcare professional prepays a $50 B2B license specifically citing your 'No AI' pledge as the deciding factor over Obsidian or Word.
Major note-taking apps are forcing AI features into every interaction, causing user backlash and privacy concerns. The 'Boycott ChatGPT' thread on a community hit 68k upvotes, and a community is actively complaining about 'AI slop' (3.1k upvotes). Power users are exhausted by unprompted AI intrusions.
KILL at 39/100 on Skeptral. The kill-shot: “Obsidian is already offline-first, no forced AI, with a $50/YEAR commercial licence and a huge plugin ecosystem, making this 'Obsidian but $50/month'. It's a…”
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