When Artem Zakirullin hit "submit" on his Show HN post for Files.md in mid-May, he probably wasn't planning to become the latest flashpoint in a decade-old argument about what "open" actually means.
But 697 upvotes later, that's exactly what happened.
The thread drew 339 comments—and an unusual participant. Steph Ango, who goes by "kepano" online and runs Obsidian as CEO, showed up to discuss sync mechanics and plugin architectures. Not because Files.md represented some existential threat to his well-established product, but because the little project had managed to surface a tension that's been quietly intensifying in personal knowledge management circles. Obsidian champions open file formats. Files.md is open-source software, MIT license and all. The difference, it turns out, matters quite a bit to people.
Browser-First, Server-Optional
Files.md runs as a Progressive Web App—everything happens in the browser, with plain Markdown files stored locally by default. "No data is sent to server," the landing page announces, no qualifiers attached.
Under the hood, it leans on the Origin Private File System (OPFS) as its primary storage mechanism, though it'll use the Local FileSystem API if you grant directory access. That architectural choice got documented in a decision record last July, the kind of detail that suggests a developer who actually uses this thing day-to-day.
The interface? Spare. A distraction-free Markdown editor, keyboard shortcuts for the essentials, a chat panel for quick captures. No sprawling graph views. No plugin marketplace, at least not yet. According to GitHub's language breakdown as of late May, the codebase sits at 56% Go, 28% JavaScript, 13% CSS, and a sliver of HTML.
What makes it workable is the sync flexibility, which comes in several flavors. Run fully local if you want. Point it at an iCloud or Dropbox folder. Self-host the included Go server. Or use the hosted sync endpoint at api.files.md—though there is no published pricing for the hosted sync server. The repository collected 1.9k stars in short order, with the project clearly marked beta.
Five Years of Tinkering
Zakirullin's GitHub profile lists him in Limassol, Cyprus, status set to "On sabbatical." In a May 11 post on Vas3k Club (published in Russian, for what that's worth), he laid out his motivation: he wanted local Markdown files he could run LLM queries against, accessible via PWA or Telegram, with everything living as plain text on disk. Simple enough.
The README mentions roughly five years of development, though the repository shows zero official releases. That beta label isn't decorative. The issues page filled up fast post-launch—requests for table support, math rendering, client-side sync improvements, mixed with UI bugs and Docker containerization asks. All opened within days of the Hacker News spike.
Zakirullin frames it as a solo effort, mostly, though the analytics show six contributors over time. The self-hosting docs include systemd targets, daily Git backup scripts, filename sanitization routines. The kind of operational detail you accumulate when you're running something yourself, tweaking it when it breaks.
Telegram, Surprisingly Central
The Telegram bot integration might sound like a novelty, but it's more deliberate than that. Messages route into Chat.md by default, letting you capture notes from your phone without tab-switching or remembering URLs. The backend runs as a single Go binary handling sync endpoints and Telegram's long-polling loop simultaneously, with per-user goroutines and channel isolation to keep things tidy.
The architectural decision records spell out the sync mechanics in granular detail: client-side timers, batch endpoints versus per-file, mtime-based content sync, ctime for the rename/delete log. These aren't theoretical exercises—they're the result of migration decisions from April, when the project ditched Wikilinks in favor of standard Markdown links for better interoperability.
File structure is opinionated but not mandatory: Chat.md, Later.md, journal/YYYY.MM Month.md, habits/*.md, and a config.json. The schema publishes at llms.txt, making the knowledge base parseable to AI agents. That's the LLM-friendliness Zakirullin emphasized in his launch posts, and it tracks with how people actually want to use these tools now.
Open Source as Wedge Issue
The Hacker News thread morphed into something larger—a referendum on business models and control. Multiple commenters pointed out that Obsidian, for all its strengths, isn't open source. Its data format is open, sure, but the software itself is proprietary. That distinction launched sub-threads about sustainability, user trust, whether a solo developer could ever match Obsidian's polish and ecosystem depth.
The timing feels significant. A Spanish startup blog, Ecosistema Startup, covered Files.md the same day as the HN launch, slotting it into what they called the "pure Markdown + minimalism + LLM-compatibility" niche. Recent "Best Obsidian Alternatives" roundups from Storyflow, CoCube, and OSSAlt have been highlighting demand for genuinely open tools—Logseq comes up frequently, as do AFFiNE and Anytype.
Files.md fits that category but takes a subtractive approach. No block references. No transclusion. No canvas view. Just files, folders, and a chat input that appends to Chat.md. Whether that's liberating or limiting depends entirely on your workflow, and probably your tolerance for missing features.
What Comes Next (If Anything)
Zakirullin posted a quieter version of the launch to Reddit's r/SideProject around May 15, describing Files.md as "a minimal Obsidian alternative for lazy people." The framing is tongue-in-cheek but probably strategic. Lazy people—or maybe just pragmatic ones—don't want to configure sync servers or learn plugin APIs. They want to open a browser, hit Command+K, start writing.
The repository includes GitHub Sponsorship links but no disclosed funding. No company entity, no team page, no roadmap beyond whatever's piling up in the issues. Social media mentions tracked by Trendshift show posts clustering around the Hacker News window, then tapering off.
Early adopters seem unfazed by that uncertainty, or maybe that's who self-selects for this kind of project. The GeekNews summary (published in Hindi) and other multilingual coverage suggest international interest, though separating genuine adoption from typical launch-spike noise is near impossible at this stage. The fact that Obsidian's CEO engaged directly in the thread legitimized the conversation, perhaps unintentionally. It's rare for an established player to wade into an upstart's launch discussion.
Whether Files.md becomes infrastructure for a meaningful user base or remains a personal tool that Zakirullin happened to open-source will depend on what gets built over the next several months, if anything. The beta modal still greets new users at app.files.md. The sync documentation warns about timestamp drift and manual git backups. These aren't dealbreakers for developers. For everyone else, they're reminders that open source often means some assembly required—and sometimes, no instruction manual.
