Running TypeFire and Obsidian on the Same Vault

The instinct when trying a new notes app is to pick one. With markdown vaults you do not have to, and often should not.

Why this works at all

An Obsidian vault is a folder of .md files. There is no database, no lock file and no exclusive access. Obsidian watches the folder and re-indexes when something changes.

So a second app writing into that folder is not a hack. It is the intended consequence of storing notes as files.

The division that makes sense

Not "which app is better", but which app is better at which moment.

Obsidian owns thinking. Long sessions, linking, plugins, canvas, restructuring. The work where you are deliberately in your notes.

The companion owns interruption. The two moments that happen while you are doing something else:

• Capture. A thought arrives while you are in Slack.
• Lookup. You need something you wrote while writing an email.

Both are badly served by any app you have to open, which is why the standard workaround is a second inbox that never gets reconciled.

With TypeFire pointed at the same vault: ⌘⌃⇧N captures, ⌘⌃3 searches and pastes into the app you are already in, and ⌘⌃⇧D opens today's daily note. Obsidian is untouched and picks up the changes.

The checks to run first

Do not point anything new at a vault you care about without these.

1. Test on a copy.

cp -R ~/Vault ~/Vault-test

Point the new app at the copy for a week.

2. Checksum before and after.

find ~/Vault-test -name '*.md' -exec shasum {} \; | sort > before.txt
# use the app for a while
find ~/Vault-test -name '*.md' -exec shasum {} \; | sort > after.txt
diff before.txt after.txt

Only files you actually edited should appear.

3. Check the round trip on an edit. Open a note with a callout, an embed and a footnote. Change one word. Save. Diff it. If anything else moved, the app is re-serializing your markdown and should not be near a real vault.

4. Rename a note and check the links. A good implementation rewrites every reference; a poor one breaks them silently.

What TypeFire does on that test

The published result: a 10,012 file vault containing unicode filenames, plugin frontmatter, dotted filenames and a 60,000 word note, listed and opened with zero files modified.

That is the number to ask any companion app for.

Things to know

Plugin files are left alone. Obsidian's .obsidian folder and plugin data are not touched, and plugin frontmatter is preserved as written.

No hidden folder is added. Version history lives in TypeFire's own space rather than inside your vault.

Sync one thing, not two. If both apps sync the same folder independently you will get conflicts. Pick one syncing mechanism.

Attachments follow the vault's convention rather than a new one.

The same blocks draw the same way on both sides. Since 5.1 TypeFire edits tables in place with grips and menus, draws Obsidian's callouts as colored boxes that fold, and handles footnotes, a [TOC] block, [[Note#Heading]] links and ![[embeds]] with hover previews. All of it is written back in the syntax Obsidian reads, so a note edited in one app looks the same in the other.

When one app is right after all

If you never write outside your notes app, the companion buys you nothing. This setup pays off in proportion to how much of your day is spent in Mail, Slack, an editor or a terminal, which for most people is nearly all of it.