VaultBase vs Obsidian

Team RBAC without giving up markdown

Obsidian vaults are single-user by design. Sharing means copying folders or using third-party Git workflows with no permission model. VaultBase adds real RBAC — roles, groups, folder-level and file-level permissions, deny-wins logic — on top of the same plain markdown files. Your team gets scoped access without leaving the vault format.

Permissions use a {user} expansion pattern, so personal folders, shared project spaces, and sensitive policy docs coexist in one vault with clear boundaries.

MCP access for AI agents

Obsidian has community AI plugins, but none expose your vault to external agents through a standardized protocol. VaultBase ships an MCP server with 25 tools — search, read, write-back, trace queries, intelligence briefings — all respecting RBAC. An AI agent can only see what the calling user is allowed to see.

This matters for teams using Claude Code, Cursor, or custom agents. Your knowledge base becomes a living context source without exposing confidential docs to the wrong model or user.

Decision traces and context graph

Obsidian has no built-in concept of a "decision." VaultBase decision traces are markdown files with structured frontmatter linking inputs (docs read), policies (rules applied), and reasoning. The context graph tracks these relationships, flags stale references when source docs change, and detects contradictions between decisions.

When an agent asks "has this been decided before?", VaultBase returns precedent decisions with full provenance — not just keyword matches.

Self-hostable single binary

Obsidian Sync is a proprietary service — you cannot run your own sync server. VaultBase is a single Go binary (AGPL-3.0) you can run anywhere: a VPS, your company's infrastructure, or behind a corporate firewall. The cloud option starts at $4/mo if you prefer managed hosting, but you always have the choice to self-host with zero licensing cost.

Who should choose VaultBase

• ✓ Teams that need access control — engineering orgs, agencies, or companies where not everyone should see everything.
• ✓ AI-forward workflows — if you use Claude Code, MCP agents, or want your knowledge base to feed AI context with permission scoping.
• ✓ Decision-heavy environments — architecture teams, policy groups, or any org that needs to track why decisions were made and detect when they go stale.
• ✓ Self-hosting requirements — regulated industries, air-gapped networks, or teams that need full data sovereignty.

If you're a solo user happy with Obsidian's plugin ecosystem and don't need team features or AI agent access, Obsidian is a great choice. VaultBase is built for the use cases Obsidian wasn't designed to solve.

Migrating from Obsidian

VaultBase uses the same vault format as Obsidian — plain markdown with wikilinks and YAML frontmatter. Migration is straightforward:

1. 1. Point VaultBase at your existing Obsidian vault directory — your files work as-is.
2. 2. VaultBase indexes your content for FTS5 search and builds the context graph automatically.
3. 3. Set up RBAC rules for your team — assign roles, define folder permissions, create groups.
4. 4. Connect your AI agents via MCP. They'll see only what each user's permissions allow.

No export step, no format conversion, no data loss. You can even keep using Obsidian as an editor alongside VaultBase's server and sync.