Obsidian doesn't work for teams

No real-time collaboration. No shared vaults. No permissions. Obsidian is a solo tool, and hacking it into a team tool creates more problems than it solves.

Obsidian was designed for individual note-taking, and it's excellent at that. The challenge arises when a team tries to use it collaboratively, which happens regularly because someone on the team loves Obsidian and assumes everyone else will too.

The workarounds people try reveal the gap between what Obsidian offers and what teams need.

Shared Dropbox folder. Put the vault in Dropbox so everyone can access it. Result: sync conflicts when two people edit the same file. Corrupted files when Dropbox syncs a partially written file. No way to know who changed what. No access controls (everyone can see and edit everything).

Git repository. Use Git for version control and sync. Result: every team member needs to understand Git. Merge conflicts in markdown are manageable for developers and incomprehensible for everyone else. The commit-push-pull workflow adds friction to every edit. Non-technical team members are effectively excluded.

Obsidian Sync. The paid sync service can share vaults between users. Result: limited sharing controls, no real-time co-editing, no granular permissions, no commenting, and a per-user cost that grows with team size.

Each workaround introduces problems that a tool designed for collaboration handles natively: who can edit what, how simultaneous edits work, how to manage permissions for sensitive content, how to see others' contributions, and how to search across everyone's work.

Fabric was built for both individual and team use. Shared workspaces with granular permissions. Real-time editing on notes and docs. Comments for discussion. Self-writing documentation that the whole team can search. Semantic search across everyone's contributions. The collaboration isn't hacked on through file-sharing workarounds. It's built into the architecture.

Frequently asked questions

Can Obsidian work for a team of two? Two people sharing a vault through Obsidian Sync is workable if both are comfortable with the limitations: no real-time co-editing, limited permissions, potential sync conflicts. Beyond two or three people, the friction grows rapidly.

What about Obsidian Publish for team wikis? Obsidian Publish creates a read-only website from your vault. It's useful for publishing documentation but doesn't provide the interactive, searchable, AI-powered team knowledge base that self-writing docs offer.

How does Fabric handle team permissions? Workspaces have role-based access controls. Content can be shared at the space, folder, or item level. Private content stays private. Shared content is visible to the people you choose. Privacy controls are granular and flexible.

Can individual team members keep personal notes alongside team content? Yes. Personal content in your library is private by default. Team content in shared workspaces is visible to the team. Both are searchable from the same interface, with personal results visible only to you.

What about team members who already use Obsidian individually? They can continue using Obsidian for personal notes while participating in the team's shared workspace in Fabric. The tools complement each other: Obsidian for personal markdown writing, Fabric for team search, AI, and collaboration.

Does Fabric support real-time co-editing? Yes. Notes and docs support real-time collaborative editing with cursor presence, similar to Google Docs. Multiple team members can work on the same document simultaneously.

How does team search work? Semantic search spans the team's shared workspace: everyone's contributions, connected tools, self-writing documentation. Results are filtered by access permissions, so each team member sees only what they're authorised to see.

What team sizes is Fabric designed for? Fabric works for teams from two people to large organisations. The knowledge scaling benefits increase with team size because more people generating knowledge means a richer, more useful knowledge base for everyone.

Related reading: Obsidian is not for everyone, The knowledge scaling problem, The second brain for companies, How to build a company brain. Related pages: Fabric vs Obsidian, Setting up a collaborative workspace, Self-writing docs.