ObsiKO 101 — Help Home

ObsiKO 101
===

A guide for Markdown beginners who want to build their own universe

First time opening ObsiKO?

ObsiKO has all kinds of handy features, but this one document is all you need to learn them!
From the basics — the Writing Helper, organizing, searching, exporting — to a dictionary, a spell checker, a gorgeous starry Graph View, a calendar and schedule manager, a dashboard, a Prompt Helper, and even writing alongside an AI Agent to build an LLM Wiki!
This document is the official help wiki, prepared so you can walk through every charm of ObsiKO step by step.

ObsiKO is a Markdown editor that's serious about Korean writing.
No more wandering from one writing app to the next!
It was built by a developer who'd drifted through every writing app out there, just to have one that finally felt comfortable — and here it is~😘
Built on Markdown, ObsiKO lets you connect notes with [[links]] just like Obsidian, so you can build your own beautiful bundle of knowledge (a vault).
And it's the only place you'll find an AI Agent that helps you write, plus a gorgeous mind map with pen-device drawing tools and a map-drawing tool!

Every entry in this wiki is connected to the others through wiki links in the form [[Title]]. Hover over a link and click it, or tap lightly on mobile, and you'll zip straight to that document.

Ready?
Click the link below to get started right now!

🧭 The full map

1. Let's start off easy

• What's New — been away a while? Everything new, gathered in one place ✨
• 01 Getting Started — opening your knowledge storage (vault), creating your first document, and rock-solid autosave
• 02 A Tour of the Screen — the sidebar, tabs, editor, and right panel, all laid out at a glance

2. The magic of writing (Markdown + Korean tools)

• 03 Markdown Basics — headings, bold, highlight, lists, checkboxes — get the fundamentals down solid!
• 04 Advanced Markdown — tables, math, callouts, footnotes, code blocks, plus diagrams and charts (20+ kinds) to make your writing richer!
• 04-1 Frontmatter Properties — pick properties like title, status, and due date in Korean or English (choice, calendar, chips, links) — and where material came from 🪪
• 05 View Modes & Korean Input — the magic of instant rendering as you type, and rock-solid protection for Korean input
• 06 Korean Writing Tools — smart spelling and word-spacing correction, plus a built-in dictionary!

3. Finding, connecting and organizing your thoughts (Obsidian style)

• 07 Search & Navigation — every feature, by name! Command palette (⌘P), quick file open (⌘⇧P), full-text search everywhere (⌘⇧F), plus search by meaning. In Reference View: highlight a PDF, read a region of a scan, and jump to a moment in a transcript!
• 08 Wiki Links & Tags — weave notes together with [[links]], keep them tidy with #tags, and point at a single paragraph with block IDs
• 09 Backlinks & Outline — who's calling me? Check your document's table of contents and its web of connections
• 10 Graph View — watch your notes twinkle like stars in a universe of their own 🌌
• 11 Mind Map — freely lay out your thoughts with cards and arrows on an infinite canvas
• 11-1 Map Drawing — dungeon & village maps on a tiled grid (4 styles · tracks · stamps · note links) 🗺️
• 12 Bases (Data Tables) — collect notes into tables, edit in place, chart them, and add relations & rollups — your frontmatter is the database 📊
• 12-1 Project View — one base, a whole project: cover, progress, kanban, templates 🗂️
• 12-2 Library & Reading Log — type a title and the cover & TOC fill in automatically! Gather books on a vertical shelf and drag a cover to mark it read 📚
• 12-3 Ledger — just paste a card text and it sorts itself out! Budgets, calendar badges, and AI check-ups 💰
• 12-4 Knowledge Packs — set up a bookshelf, PARA, a ledger, or a whole web-novel folder with one install 📦

4. Managing your day (calendar · timer · dashboard)

• 13 Calendar — browse notes by date, and keep track of your schedule (to-dos) and alarms 📅
• 14 Focus Timer — get in the zone with Pomodoro sessions! Goals and a character counter included 🍅
• 15 Dashboard — notes, schedules, and goals, all as numbers and graphs at a glance 📊
• 15-1 Review & Rediscovery — turn what you want to remember into review cards, and let buried notes come back to you 🎴🔁
• 15-2 Routines — bundle the three or four chores you repeat and finish them in one press, with automatic chapter numbering 🔁

5. Writing with AI

• 16 AI Agent — a smart AI assistant that writes and organizes your notes with you 🤖, packed with usage tips
• 16-1 Basic Usage — first launch, talking to it, attaching references, checking the result 🧰
• 16-2 Recipes by Scenario — "when this happens, do this" — follow-along examples 🍳
• 16-3 Writing & Composition — drafting, revising and editing with a helper ✍️
• 16-4 Building an LLM Wiki — gather material into your own wiki, with sources 📚
• 16-5 Zettelkasten & Ontology — link notes and give those links a type 🗂️
• 16-6 Recommended Prompts — a gift box of prompts to copy and use right away 🎁
• 16-7 Prompt Helper — build slash commands and Skill docs once, reuse them forever 🪄
• 16-8 Chat-only Mode — chat with AI on your phone or the web using your own API key 📱💬
• 16-9 AI Billing Guide — subscriptions, credits, your own key: what costs what
• 16-10 AI Sources & Privacy — see what the AI looked at before answering, and hide the notes you want kept private 🔍🔒
• 16-11 Personal Memory — let the AI remember your taste and context long-term (you approve every one) 🧠
• 16-12 Writing Helper — questions that make you think, plus genre-aware coaching
• 17 Structuring Knowledge — turn scattered notes into connected knowledge with Zettelkasten, ontology & PARA! 🧠

6. Presenting, sharing and exporting

• 18 Making Presentations — turn the Markdown you wrote into presentation slides in a snap!
• 18-1 E-book & Web Novel Viewer — preview your writing like an e-book or web-novel app with a single line of frontmatter! 📖📱
• 18-2 Character Codex & References — build a character dictionary with frontmatter and write dialogue with face icons using <<name>>! 🎭
• 18-3 Messenger & Visual Novel Views — play your script back as a chat drama or visual-novel game screen! 💬🎮
• 18-4 Random Box — roll characters, places, dice and wheels all in one panel 🎲🎡
• 19 Export — package your finished writing beautifully as PDF, HTML, HWPX, Word, EPUB, wiki markup, or a ZIP of the originals
• Share to the web — hand over a single link instead of a file; whoever gets it reads it in a browser with no app and no account 🔗
• 20 Web Clipper — capture web pages, selected text, links, and screen regions straight into Markdown notes 📎

7. History, housekeeping & making it your own

• 21 Activity Log — a timeline of everything that happened in your vault 🧾
• 22 Trash — your deleted files are waiting here 🗑️
• 23 Settings & Themes — make a one-of-a-kind ObsiKO with your own colors and fonts (letting another AI app read your vault lives here too)
• 24 Keyboard Shortcuts — stay comfortable without a mouse! The keyboard shortcut cheat sheet
• 25 Platform Guide — handy tips for web, PC, and mobile devices (widgets, Siri shortcuts, obsiko:// quick-open)
• 26 Emergency Guide — when it looks like your writing is gone, start here 🆘

⚡ The basics in 5 minutes

New to ObsiKO? Just follow these five steps and you're already an ObsiKO master!
Before you start, all you need to know is this: file tree on the left, editor in the middle, main features on the right.

1. Open a folder (vault). When you first launch it, press Open Folder (⌘O / Ctrl+O) in the middle of the welcome screen and pick a home for your precious notes. (If you've already opened one before, use the Open Folder button at the bottom of the sidebar.) In a hurry? You can just create a file right away. If you don't open a folder, it's automatically saved to your device's default storage! → Details: 01 Getting Started
2. Open up a new note. Press the New Document button (or ⌘N) and a clean .md file appears. Type a cool title and hit Enter to jump straight into the body!
3. Markdown made easier! Just type things like # Heading, **bold**, - list, ==highlight== and beautiful formatting appears like magic. Don't know Markdown? No problem at all. You don't even need to memorize it.

"Markdown? If you want it, I'll give it to you... go look for it. I left all of Markdown there." 🏴‍☠️
And so the world entered the Great Age of Markdown.

That's right — we have ObsiKO's very own cheat sheet! Open the cheat sheet in the sidebar for one-touch entry of Markdown, charts and more. Favorited cheat sheet items are even available right from the right-click (long-press) menu! → 03 Markdown Basics
And click the little button in the bottom-right corner of the editor — ta-da! — frequently used formatting tool buttons pop right out!

4. Let's link your notes together. Just type [[! A list of your other note names pops right up so you can link them with ease. Type part of the note name to find it even faster. Don't see it in the list? No worries — click an unlinked link and a new note is created with that link's name! → 08 Wiki Links & Tags
5. I'll take care of saving. You never have to press a save button! Even if you quit and reopen the app, the screen you were looking at pops right back up, exactly as it was.

💡 Why ObsiKO is special

• A capable dedicated AI agent named "ObsiKO." It helps with writing and building your knowledge folders, and after selecting text you can right-click (long-press) for one-click proofreading, plus image generation (requires connecting Gemini or GPT). Reading notes aloud works without any key — your device's own voice reads instantly (a connection is only needed to save it as an audio file). Just log in or enter an API key to start using it!
• Turn numbers into pictures, in one line. From bar/line/area/pie(donut) charts to a radar (hexagonal stats), heatmap, treemap, box plot, and even a garden-style activity calendar, plus a Venn diagram and fishbone diagram that Mermaid simply can't draw — one chart block gives you 20+ kinds of data charts in an instant! They're drawn as clean graphics with zero external libraries, and they stay intact when you export to PDF or HTML too. Drop one in with one touch from the cheat sheet, hit the edit button, and just tweak the numbers. (You can also ask the AI Agent to "turn this data into a chart/Venn diagram and write it up as a note.")
• Your files, safely stored in your own space. Every note is safely saved as a plain-text .md file in your own folder.
• Consistent everywhere. Pick up the work you were doing at home or at the office and continue on your iPhone or iPad while you're out. Desktop, tablet, phone — it looks and feels exactly the same everywhere you go, and comfortable everywhere too, of course!
• Matching your devices is one button. Turn on Settings ▸ Sync between devices and the vault is kept in a private repository in your own GitHub, matched automatically when you open it, after you save and when you come back to the app. There is no ObsiKO server, so your writing lives only in your account — and if something is about to be deleted, sync stops and asks first. (A cloud folder like iCloud or Dropbox works just as well.) → 23 Settings & Themes · 25 Platform Guide
• Showing it to someone is one link. The share button on the tab bar turns a note, mind map or table into a web address, and whoever receives it reads it in a browser exactly as it looks in the app. Done with it? “Stop sharing”, once. → 19 Export
• Don't forget the mind map, complete with double-click to create and connect nodes~ You can drag in image files or Markdown files to turn them straight into nodes, and images or videos you find in the image search go in with a simple paste.
• Import a Markdown file full of links and press the Auto Mind Map button to kick off a mind map instantly. If even that feels like too much, you can ask the AI Agent to build one for you on desktop! ⟶ 16-1 Basic Usage
• And as a bonus, there are pen-device-ready vector drawing tools great for taking notes or doodling.😉 ⟶ 11 Mind Map

❓ Have more questions?

• If you're lost, look for the topic you're curious about in the full map above!
• Can't remember a shortcut? One page of 24 Keyboard Shortcuts is all you need.
• Curious about features that only work on your phone or tablet? Check out 25 Platform Guide.
• Something looks wrong? Open 26 Emergency Guide — most of the time it isn't gone, just somewhere else.
• Some browsers can't open folders! In that case, it'll let you create files right inside the browser instead — just write your note and use Export to save it somewhere else afterward.

This help documentation itself is actually a real vault made with ObsiKO. Go ahead and click links to your heart's content while exploring the features, and enjoy everything ObsiKO has to offer! 🙌

INFO — Questions? Send us an email!
If you run into any inconvenience or issue, please feel free to email us anytime at support@obsiko.com.

A note from HyZ

Honestly, the reason ObsiKO exists isn't anything grand.
I was starting a new project — building an LLM wiki with AI and writing alongside it — and hopping between this app and that app, setting each one up, got old fast.
I come from an art background, so I've never been on friendly terms with the terminal, and editing Markdown in VS Code or Obsidian never quite satisfied me. Customizing every last thing was too much of a chore, too. A long time ago I spent days building a full plugin setup in Obsidian on desktop, then lost the whole thing — and I haven't touched it since. Anyone who's lost a setup knows the feeling. (sigh)
And the dealbreaker: Obsidian's AI plugins don't run on mobile. The AI bolted onto writing apps was far too thin for organizing thousands of files and actually using them as source material. NotebookLM finds and organizes things well, but you're locked to Gemini, editing or writing notes directly is awkward, and converting to PDF was a hassle. (frustrating)
What I needed was one thing that could organize the thousands of scraps and settings I'd scribbled down over the years, find them for me, and let me keep writing from there. It had to let me use the top-tier models from Claude Code or Codex, and I wanted to work at the same level on desktop, tablet and phone.
On top of that, with AI improving by the day, the time spent learning an app started to feel like a waste. I figured I'd learn more by stacking up a few thick books and spending that study time building an app tuned to my own workflow instead.
I even threw out the usual "it's free" model of selling AI credits through a subscription. Not because I couldn't — I just didn't want to top up credits to use my own app. (ObsiKO is set up so that only the people who need AI connect it. Connecting AI just makes things a little easier; the app's features stay the same either way.) Selling AI credits means the app inevitably ends up on cheap models, and… I have a lot more to say about that, but I'll stop here.
I also hated seeing ads while I worked. Getting logged out every so often and having to sign in again was tiresome too. So I stripped out everything that bothered me.
And that's how ObsiKO was born. A monument to my own laziness, really.
It did grow bigger than I first planned. Once I got going I caught myself endlessly muttering, "wouldn't this feature make it easier? couldn't this bit be smoother?" 😂
Above all, I genuinely lost track of time making it — it was a joy. It was going to be the foundation for all my other work, after all.
It was never built to be sold in the first place. (I didn't even think hard about the name…)
That said, I didn't build it for the public good either. Just because this app has no revenue model doesn't mean there's no way to make money from what surrounds it. Even without chasing small returns right now, I believe this experience and this result will carry me somewhere higher.
There's still plenty I want to do, and ObsiKO is simply my firstborn — I'm just full of affection for it. Think of it as the most basic system I've built so I can do proper work on top of it. (It's free, but it isn't one of those hollowed-out apps.)
It turned out useful enough that keeping it to myself felt like a waste, so I put it out there.

Enjoy writing comfortably with ObsiKO, everyone!
August 2026, HyZ

(This note was written in ObsiKO too.)

Next: 00-1 What's New →