Notion is too complicated. 47 features you'll never touch. Databases, kanban boards, timelines, wikis, automations, formulas, rollups, relations. You signed up to write something down. Now you're watching a YouTube tutorial about linked databases.
Obsidian needs plugins for everything. Out of the box it does almost nothing. Community plugins. Then you configure those plugins. Then two plugins conflict and you spend an evening in a GitHub issues thread.
Both tools share the same assumption: you want power. You want flexibility. You want to build a system.
Most people don't.
Most people want to write something down and find it later.
The setup tax
Every tool with a "getting started" guide longer than one page has a setup tax. The tax is the gap between installing the app and actually using it.
Notion's setup tax is templates. You browse the template gallery. You pick one. You customize it. You realize it doesn't quite fit your brain. You start from scratch. Two hours gone. Zero notes written.
Obsidian's setup tax is plugins. You install Dataview. You install Templater. You install Calendar. You configure sync. You pick a theme. You Google "best Obsidian plugins 2026" and open fifteen tabs. One hour gone. Zero notes written.
The tool became the project.
What if the tool just worked?
Here's what it should do:
- Let you write something down.
- Find it when you need it.
That's it. That's the whole product.
But there's a third thing that used to be impossible and now isn't.
Let your AI read it.
This is the part nobody else gets right. You use Claude or ChatGPT every day. You paste context into every conversation. You re-explain your project, your stack, your constraints. Every. Single. Time.
Your notes already contain this context. The problem is that your AI can't see them.
A knowledge base your AI can actually use
Hjarni is a clean, simple knowledge base with a built-in MCP server. Not a note app with AI bolted on. AI-native, not AI-added. The whole thing was designed around one idea: you write, your AI reads.
Notes, folders, tags. Markdown. That's the structure.
Your AI reads those notes through MCP, an open protocol that lets AI tools connect to external data. Connect once. Stop re-explaining yourself. Your notes become reusable context across conversations.
No more pasting. No more prefacing every question with three paragraphs of background.
You just ask.
Less is the feature
We left features out on purpose.
No kanban boards. No calendars. No databases. No spreadsheet views. No AI writing your notes for you.
Notes. Folders. Tags. Search. A built-in MCP server.
Five things. Nothing wasted.
Because the goal isn't to build a system. The goal is to think, write it down, and let your AI remember it for you.
The real question
How much time do you spend configuring your tools versus actually using them?
If the answer isn't "zero", you're using the wrong tool.
