Notes from the playground.
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Notion vs Obsidian vs NotebookLM in 2026: which one to pick
Notion vs Obsidian vs NotebookLM — they look like alternatives, but they solve three different problems. This is the honest 3-way comparison: pricing, AI, ownership, mobile, and which one to pick based on what you actually do with your notes in 2026.
Best Obsidian alternatives in 2026: AI-native, local-first, open-source
Looking for an Obsidian alternative with built-in AI, sync, or open-source guarantees? Here are the seven best options in 2026 — with honest tradeoffs, not affiliate fluff. Includes which ones keep your vault portable and which ones lock you in.
Froots 0.1 Beta — the first public build
Froots is in public beta. A local-first desktop workspace with a markdown editor, a flexible vault, and an agent layer built into the app — honest about what's shipping today and what's still ahead.
One app instead of six: replacing Notion, Obsidian, n8n, Zapier, OpenClaw, and Hermes with Froots
Six apps for notes, knowledge, automations, and agents is five too many. Here's the honest case for collapsing all of them into one local-first workspace — and three ways to adopt it that don't require ripping out what you already have.
Automate git worktrees with an AI agent (full guide)
Git worktrees are underused because the ergonomics are mediocre. An AI agent fixes that. This is a 15-minute guide to spinning up, managing, and cleaning up worktrees automatically — using Froots routines or any shell-capable agent runtime.
The local-first AI workspace stack, 2026
If you're building (or just using) a local-first AI workspace in 2026, these are the ten building blocks — editor, vault, runtime, sync, tools, model routing, memory, inbox, widgets, plugins — and how the serious options stack up across each.
On 'Where Good Ideas Come From,' ten years later
Steven Johnson's 2010 book is one of the quiet spiritual prerequisites for how Froots is designed. Ten years on, the core argument holds — and one part of it hasn't aged quite as well.
Keeping your graph view from becoming a hairball
A reader in Lisbon writes in: 'My vault graph used to be beautiful. Now it looks like a dead jellyfish. Help.' Here's our reply — three settings, one habit, one acceptance.
On naming agents after your pets (don't)
A reader in Berlin asks whether to rename Froots's built-in agents after his two cats. We have thoughts. Specifically: we have one thought, strongly held.