In search of a knowledge management tool

Nov 7, 2025

---

---

For the past few years, I have tried to find the best place to store documentation, thoughts, ideas, and more—a tool that truly serves me. In this article, I want to share what I’ve learned and tried.

First, let’s look at what I want to achieve and what is important to me in the process.

What information do I want to store?

While different types of information should probably be stored differently, my main focus here is to save the following categories:

• Ideas for new projects, blog posts, etc.
• Guides and “good to know” information - basically getting things out of my head and “onto paper”
• Knowledge for studies - notes during lectures, summaries for learning, questions and answers
• Plans and to-dos - for when I have initial thoughts on how to approach a new project

What is important for me?

While these things can be stored almost anywhere, I have some requirements for how the tool I use handles the content. Some of these I only noticed as I tried out different options.

• Ease of access - I want to be able to access my writing on any of my devices easily, whether PC or mobile phone.
• Minimalism - I don’t want fancy styles or design; I want to get straight to the content.
• Structure and linking - I want to connect different aspects of my knowledge and structure it using categories.
• Sharing - I want to be able to make some (not all) of the content I create available to others.
• Easy hosting - I want the content to be hosted without much fuss—not locked into a CMS.
• Comfort - It should be easy to start writing. I want to open it and be ready to go.

Comparison of tools

These are the tools I tried over the course of several months each. Here are my thoughts about how they held up in relation to what is important for me.

Tool	Ease of access	Minimalism	Structure and Linking	Sharing	Easy Hosting	Comfort
MS Word and simple folders (synced)	+ PC + Mobile	(+) Word is a big tool	-	-	+	(+) Not too easy on mobile
Mediawiki	+ PC (+) Mobile	- Writing in Mediawiki language is sometimes tricky (the editor is not that nice :D)	+	(+) User setup is not trivial	(+) Maintenance	- Editor is bad and does not work well at all on mobile
Obsidian	+ PC - Mobile (Native App only works with Obsidian Sync)	(+) Because the way Obsidian looks and works is customizable, I made it work	+	- Only via hosted Obsidian instance	- Must host own instance	+ Super easy and WYSIWYG
Jetbrains YouTrack	+ PC + Mobile	-	(+) Not as powerful as other tools	- Not possible	- Must host own instance	- UI not easy for just writing
Static MD files with 11ty	+ PC + Mobile	+ Fully customizable to be as minimal as it gets	+ Full linking via HTML	+	+	(+) Basically only needs a text editor, no WYSIWYG

What I am for now running with

I decided that I will use two tools going forward: Obsidian and Static MD files with 11ty.

Why I use Obsidian

Obsidian is unobtrusive in the way I can write in it. It allows easy formatting, is pleasing to the eye, and offers a very flexible layout, so I can experiment with different structures and links without having to think about the “engineering” side of things. It is easily syncable (since it consists of files that can be located in any folder), and I can access it (nearly) everywhere. As the text is formatted using Markdown, I can easily transform my writing into blog posts for my website if I like. The only issue is access from mobile; I will need to figure something out here.

Why I use 11ty

This static site generator is easy to use, and the templating language feels very comfortable for me. My website has used it for several years already (since 2023), and because the content is Markdown-based, I have good integration with Obsidian.

Cheers, Basti

---