Obsidian is one of the best homes ever built for knowledge: local Markdown files, backlinks, a graph of everything you have ever thought. If you want to keep ideas for years and watch them connect, it is superb, and this page is not going to talk you out of it.
But a vault has one structural trait that matters enormously for ADHD: it waits silently. It remembers everything and reminds you of nothing. That is fine for knowledge, because knowledge can wait. It is fatal for commitments, because a follow-up that waits for you to remember to look is a follow-up that is already dropped. ADHD Notes exists for exactly that other half: open loops, with context, that come back to you on their own.
| ADHD Notes | Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|
| Stores | Open loops: tasks, follow-ups, threads | Knowledge: notes, ideas, reference |
| A thing’s fate | Closed and forgotten; that is the win | Kept forever; gains value over time |
| Attention direction | It comes to you (push): follow-ups resurface, reminders arrive | You go to it (pull) |
| Structure | Deliberately near zero: flat, capture-first | Rewarded: links, folders, plugins, graph |
| What a "note" is | Context riding on a task, so future-you picks it up cold | The point itself; the knowledge |
| Fails when | Designed against exactly that; resurfacing is the product | You stop visiting the vault |
| Price | Free while in beta; one paid plan (around 6 a month) is planned | Free for personal use; optional paid sync add-on |
Pick Obsidian if: You are building a long-term knowledge base: research, writing, ideas that gain value as they connect. Nothing resurfaces tasks in a vault unless you build and maintain that machinery yourself.
Pick ADHD Notes if: Your problem is not storing what you know, it is dropping what you owe: the follow-up, the reply, the thread that left your head the moment it was out of sight.