Trea combines with Obsidian to become a writing tool: local knowledge base upgraded to an AI writing assistant

This is a reprint of the categorized article, based on a previous write-up: theBuild an All-in-One Writing Platform with Trae, an Intelligent Programming ToolThe next episode is going to be about how to use Trae Empowering Local Knowledge Bases, restrained for two days by a server crash, happened to read this article on borrowed flowers, as a sister to the original article, included in this site.

Recently, it has come to the author's attention that Obsidian Browser Cut & Hide PluginIt is powerful, so I started to try to use Obsidian, hoping to build a local knowledge base that meets my personal needs and incorporates the intelligent features of AI. During the trial, I also installed several AI plug-ins for Obsidian, but the actual experience was not satisfactory. The configuration process of the plug-ins is cumbersome and complex, and even after consulting the documentation, sometimes it is difficult to solve the problems, and it is even necessary to search for other users' feedback on community platforms such as GitHub in order to find a solution.

The main function of these plugins is to provide AI assistants within Obsidian to help users retrieve note content and generate new content based on existing notes. This makes me wonder if AI IDEs such as Trae can be used to solve similar problems. After all, one of the core functions of AI IDEs is also information retrieval and content generation, such as code retrieval, code question answering, and generating new code.

After some exploration, I found that using an AI IDE (e.g., TRAE) in combination with Obsidian works surprisingly well and the experience is very smooth. This program has the following three main advantages:

Top 3 Benefits of AI IDE Enabling Obsidian

• Fuzzy search, say goodbye to keyword dependency: With the AI IDE, users can retrieve a library of notes using more natural, fuzzy language and are no longer limited to exact keyword matching.
• Multidimensional research and integration of knowledge: The AI IDE can integrate information from multiple note-taking software to provide users with more comprehensive research support and advice, facilitating the integration of knowledge.
• Intelligent creation and efficient editing: The AI IDE assists users in generating and modifying note content, such as quickly creating new note files or touching up and refining existing note copy.

In order to make it easier for most readers to understand and get started, this tutorial will take Trae, which is free and has a default Chinese interface, as an example. But in fact, the AI IDEs on the market are very similar in terms of operation logic and functionality, so even if readers use Trae, they will not be able to use it. Cursor maybe Windsurf Other AI IDEs such as this one will be able to easily understand the content of this article, and even the placement of shortcuts and buttons is much the same.

What is Obsidian?

To accommodate readers who have not used Obsidian or are not familiar with it, here is a brief introduction to Obsidian.

Obsidian is a powerful local note-taking software that focuses on knowledge management with support for Markdown formatting, bi-directional linking, and local storage, and is designed to help users build a personal knowledge system.

First of all, Obsidian has perfect support for Markdown, a lightweight markup language with an easy-to-learn and powerful syntax. Users can easily create formatted text using Markdown syntax. If you are not familiar with Markdown syntax, you can refer to the documentation provided at the end of this article.

Second, Obsidian's unique bi-directional linking feature allows users to create associations between different notes, thus forming a dynamic knowledge network. For example, when linking from one note to another related note, the two-way link will automatically display the reverse citation, making it easy for users to trace the knowledge sources and associations. This feature is particularly suitable for organizing complex ideas and building a structured knowledge system.

Finally, Obsidian notes are stored completely locally as Markdown-formatted files. Users can open and migrate notes at any time using any Markdown-enabled editor, ensuring complete autonomy and control over the data. This is also the basis of our ability to use AI IDEs such as Cursor to organize and generate Obsidian notes.

Preparation: Open the Obsidian folder with Trae

All files in Obsidian are stored in a specified folder locally by the user. Users can find the location of the Obsidian notes folder by clicking "Manage Repository" through the repository name in the left sidebar of Obsidian, and then clicking the three dots icon in the pop-up page and selecting "Show Repository Folder".

Next, start the Trae software that you have already downloaded and installed. After completing the initialization settings according to the software guide, select "Open Folder". In the file selection dialog box, select the Obsidian notes folder you just found to load the Obsidian notes library into Trae.

Quickly retrieve Obsidian notes using Trae

Although Obsidian itself supports a variety of note organization and search methods, such as tags, backlinks, keyword search, etc., its search function is still mainly based on the exact matching of keywords. When the size of the note library is huge, it is difficult for users to remember all the relevant keywords, and subconsciously they tend to think of the problem to be solved rather than the specific keywords.

This is one of the reasons why many users abandon Obsidian after their note libraries swell: knowledge management is time-consuming and laborious, but it's hard to find the notes you need quickly without effective organization.

The strength of AI is in understanding and processing ambiguous information and questions. For example, if a user wants to find a piece of information about Apple's model distillation research in the "Clippings" folder of the Notes library, they can simply type "#" into the Chat input box on the right side of the Trae, then select the "Clippings" folder and ask the question "Apple on Model Distillation".

As can be seen from the search results, Trae not only provides an introduction to the abstract of the article, but also gives a link to the original notes file, which the user can directly click to open, and even extracts the URL of the paper from the article for further access.

In-depth research with Trae and Obsidian

When conducting research, we often need to compare and analyze multiple different note files, or integrate and organize information from multiple note files. At this point, we can use a method similar to the retrieval above to refer to a specified note file or folder and engage in multiple rounds of dialog with the AI to assist in research work.

For example, if one wants to understand two articles on Deepseek What common concepts and information are mentioned in the documents, you can cite each document using "#" when asking a question in the Chat input box.

As you can see from the results returned, Trae compares the contents of the two documents and gives a very detailed comparison.

If users have new ideas or questions about the summarized content, they can also directly discuss them further with the AI. For example, here the author Deepseek R1 Trae was asked about the $6 million cost of training a large model, and Trae retrieved some web information for reference.

Readers can discover more similar uses for their own needs and scenarios, for example:

• Aids to learning and revision: Generate quizzes, flashcards or review summaries based on the content of the user's notes to help consolidate knowledge.
• Structured Data Analysis: If a user's notes contain structured data such as tables, logs, etc., AI can assist the user in analyzing and understanding this data.

Generating and Modifying Obsidian Notes with Trae

Having described the application of the AI IDE for retrieval and assisted research above, let's look at how the AI IDE can be used to generate and edit Obsidian notes.

The first is note generation. During conversations with the AI, sometimes some very valuable content is generated that we want to save as new notes. At this point, Trae can be switched to Builder mode. In this mode, Trae can manipulate the user's files, such as modifying and creating new files.

For example, if you want Trae to extract the specified key information and create a new note based on a bookmarked document, you can issue a command in the Builder mode input box and reference the document with "#".

As you can see from the demo, Trae has created a new note file in the notes folder. Users just need to review the content of the note, confirm that it is correct and click the "Accept" button to complete the new operation.

As we all know, the tagging and backlinking system is the essence of Obsidian. Therefore, after creating a new note, we can also ask Trae to add appropriate tags and backlinks to the newly created note to facilitate subsequent retrieval and knowledge association.

The above demonstrates how Trae can directly create an entire document. So what if the user just wants to make a partial edit to an existing note?

In fact, the AI IDE also supports local editing. In an open note file, select the content you want to edit, and select the "Edit" button (usually represented by a pen icon) in the hover toolbar.

Then, in the edit box that pops up, enter the instructions for modifying the selected text, such as "Expand this text to make it more descriptive, but don't change the core content."

Trae will quickly give you the modified content and provide a comparison between the before and after modifications. If the user feels that the changes meet the requirements, he/she can click the "Accept" button and the changes will be backfilled into the note.

In addition to the new note creation and local modification, based on the editing and modification capabilities of the AI IDE, users can also discover more usage scenarios, such as categorizing and tagging multiple notes, suggesting correlation links between notes, or even generating a table of contents or an index for the entire note library.

All in all, by combining Obsidian with AI programming tools, we can build a powerful AI knowledge base. If readers have found more interesting applications based on their own industry or workflow during practice, please feel free to share them in the comment section.

The emergence of AI models has revitalized highly free software such as Obsidian by modularizing and simplifying solutions that would otherwise require complex development. Problems such as "high learning cost" and "complex management", which were once considered disadvantages, have even been transformed into advantages such as "personalization" and "intelligent assistance" with the help of AI. Intelligent assistance" and other advantages. This trend is not limited to note-taking software, but is reshaping the entire software ecosystem.