Baalda vs Obsidian: What Baalda Is and Where the Two Actually Differ

Baalda (baalda.com) describes itself as “the team second brain.”¹ In one sentence: it is a desktop notes app, like Obsidian, where every note is a plain Markdown file in a folder you own. What it adds is two things Obsidian does not ship in the base app. Several people can edit the same note at once, and an AI assistant can read and write those notes through a built-in connection, with the same permissions a person would have.

This guide explains how it works, compares it with Obsidian point by point, and marks which claims I checked and which come only from Baalda’s own marketing. Everything here is current as of 2026-10-15, and Baalda is changing fast (the site showed v0.1.86), so expect parts of this to age.

One limit up front: I did not install or run Baalda. What I know about its behavior comes from its website, its documentation and its public source repository. I have not tested its sync, its permissions or its migration from Obsidian.

Terms you need

• A vault is the folder that holds your notes. In both apps, a vault is just a directory of .md files.
• Local-first means the app works fully offline on your own disk, and any server is optional.
• A CRDT is a data structure that lets several people edit the same text at once and merges their changes automatically without conflict dialogs. Baalda uses Yjs, a widely used CRDT library.²
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a standard way for an AI tool such as Claude to call tools exposed by another program. Here, it is how an AI assistant reads and edits your notes.

How Baalda works

The interesting part is a problem Baalda’s README states directly. Plain Markdown files are easy for an AI to edit, but real-time collaboration usually stores text as an opaque CRDT state, which a plain file cannot be. Tools tend to pick one. Baalda keeps both: the .md file stays the durable source of truth, and a live CRDT sits beside it.²

flowchart LR
  F["Your .md file<br/>on disk"] <-->|"watcher and bridge"| C["Local CRDT<br/>in .context/"]
  L["Local AI agent<br/>Claude Code, etc."] -->|"edits the file"| F
  C <-->|"sync"| S["Sync server<br/>Postgres, binary updates"]
  T["Teammate's app<br/>own .md copy"] <-->|"sync"| S
  A["Cloud AI"] -->|"MCP, same permissions"| S

Two details from the source help set expectations. First, each vault gets a hidden .context/ directory holding a local search index, a config file and the CRDT store, and that config binds the folder to one specific server, so a folder is not meant to be pointed at two servers.³ Second, the stack is a Tauri v2 desktop shell with a Rust core, a CodeMirror 6 editor, SQLite for local search, and Hocuspocus plus Postgres on the server.² A server is only needed for sharing. The README says it can be self-hosted.

What is the same

Both apps keep notes as plain Markdown files on your disk, both work offline, and both support [[wikilinks]], backlinks and tags. Both let you point other tools, including Git or a coding agent, at the same folder, because the files are ordinary files.

Where they differ

A claim worth checking

Baalda’s own comparison page calls Obsidian “single-user by design” and lists real-time collaboration as something Obsidian lacks.¹¹ Obsidian’s pricing and Sync pages say otherwise: Sync includes collaboration on shared vaults, and shared-vault notes update in real time.⁴⁶

The honest reading is that the gap is narrower than Baalda’s page implies, and it sits in the mechanism and the extras. Obsidian documents text merging with diff-match-patch, which is how it reconciles two versions of the same note.⁷ Baalda documents a CRDT with live cursors and server-side per-file permissions. I could not find presence or cursors mentioned on Obsidian’s Sync page, but that is an absence on one page, not proof of absence in the app. If real-time team editing is your only need, try Obsidian’s shared vaults before concluding you need something else.

The AI claim, measured

Baalda’s page marks Obsidian’s AI support as “Partial, community plugins.” That is fair, and I can put a number on it. I counted entries in the community plugin directory published in Obsidian’s own releases repository on 2026-10-15:¹²

• 8,981 community plugins and 883 community themes.
• 59 plugin listings whose id, name or description contains “mcp,” including servers that expose a vault to Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cline.

So Obsidian is not missing MCP access, it just comes from third parties, one plugin at a time, with whatever permission model each author chose. Baalda’s difference is that MCP access goes through the same permission checks as a person, and that it is built into the product. Whether that matters depends on how many people share the notes.

How young it is

Baalda’s repository was created on 2026-07-14, has 187 stars, 34 forks and 2 open issues, and its latest release at the time was v0.1.86.¹³ That is three months old. Its changelog is honest about what that means. The unreleased section adds a version saved automatically before any large deletion, and a recovery tool that lists notes “damaged by past sync bugs (emptied, or full of repeated punctuation).”¹⁴

I would not read that as a reason to avoid it. I would read it as a reason to keep a Git backup of any vault you share, which the plain-file design makes easy. Obsidian has years of use behind it, which is the maturity point Baalda’s own page concedes.¹¹

Which one to pick

• You work alone, or with one or two people who are fine with Sync. Obsidian. It has the larger ecosystem, mobile apps and a long track record.
• A small team shares notes and AI agents edit them. Baalda is the one built for that, and its free plan covers two people. Run it on a copy of your notes first.
• You need the server to be open source and self-hosted. Baalda. Obsidian’s Sync is a paid hosted service.
• You need end-to-end encryption. Obsidian Sync claims it, and Baalda does not.

Baalda says moving an Obsidian vault is a straight folder copy that keeps wikilinks intact.¹¹ I did not test that, so try it on a copy rather than your only vault.

References