Obsidian

Obsidian treats your notes as plain Markdown files on disk and builds its interface around linking them: double-bracket a phrase and it becomes a navigable connection, with a backlinks pane showing every note that points here. The editor is split-pane by default — source and preview — and the workspace is a tiling system of movable panels rather than a single document view. The graph view renders your vault as a node-link diagram, a divisive feature that's either insight or decoration depending on how you work. A command palette and hotkeys make it keyboard-navigable, and a plugin marketplace means the interface is really a platform. The trade is curation: local-first freedom and infinite linking can become unstructured sprawl without personal discipline.