“What was the moment this product clicked?” —
A researcher, writer, software developer, or knowledge worker who has built their second brain in Obsidian and means it. They write in Markdown. They link notes intentionally. They have a vault structure they've iterated on at least twice. They use the graph view occasionally, for the pleasure of seeing their thinking made visible, not because it's the most useful view. They've installed 8–20 plugins. They have strong opinions about the right way to take notes, opinions that evolved over two years of using the wrong way.
What are they trying to do? —
What do they produce? —
They've just read a paper on collective intelligence that connects to a note they wrote six months ago about organizational design. They're opening both notes. They're adding a link and a 3-sentence synthesis at the bottom of the newer note. In 18 months, when they're writing something about organizational cognition, this link will surface. They won't remember making it. They'll be grateful they did. This is what the system is for.
Has a vault of 500–3,000 notes built over 1–4 years. Uses a folder structure (or no folders, just links — they have opinions about this). Uses core plugins: backlinks, graph view, templates, daily notes. Uses community plugins: Dataview, Templater, Calendar, and 4–10 others. Syncs across devices via Obsidian Sync or iCloud. Has exported their vault to a different tool once and come back. Recommends Obsidian to people who ask about note-taking tools and watches their eyes glaze over at the setup requirements.
Pairs with `notion-primary-user` to map the networked thought vs. structured database knowledge system philosophy. Contrast with `dovetail-primary-user` for the personal knowledge management vs. shared research repository use case. Use with `superhuman-primary-user` for knowledge workers whose primary inputs are email and notes.