Your vault stays plain Markdown. Your edits stop colliding.
Point the kutl daemon at your vault and it syncs the folder as plain Markdown on disk. Obsidian keeps working exactly as before — no plugin, no import step, no proprietary format. The files are yours, in a normal directory.
The difference shows up when the same note changes in two places at once. Concurrent edits to a Markdown file merge into one file. When two distinct files end up claiming one name, kutl keeps both rather than discarding either — the losing side is preserved as a separate notes.kutl-conflict-<id>.md copy beside it.
Plain Markdown, no plugin
kutl works at the filesystem level. The daemon watches your vault directory and syncs every change; Obsidian, your terminal, a script, or an agent all read and write the same files. There is nothing to install inside Obsidian.
Because the documents are just files, you keep the thing that drew you to Obsidian in the first place: a folder on your disk that any tool can open.
Edits merge; nothing is silently discarded
Concurrent edits to a Markdown file merge — two people (or a person and an agent) typing in the same note don't overwrite each other. The resolution is order-independent: every device settles on the same result regardless of the order changes arrive, a property exercised by property-based testing.
kutl's rule for files is that content is not silently lost. When two distinct files collide on one name, both are kept and the loser becomes a stable conflict copy. An explicit delete is still honored — if a delete wins a race, the file is removed and every device agrees.
Self-host the relay, or use the hosted one
The relay that coordinates sync is self-hostable — a single binary with an authorized-keys ACL — so your notes need never touch a server you don't control. Connections to a remote relay run over TLS (wss://).
If you'd rather not operate a server, kutlhub is the hosted relay with a browser editor; the conflict behavior is identical either way.
Agents as collaborators in the vault
Obsidian's CEO publishes official agent skills (kepano/obsidian-skills, MIT, ~35k stars as of June 2026) for letting tools like Claude Code work in a vault. kutl is the sync layer that makes that safe across machines: an agent editing a note on a server and you editing it in Obsidian produce a character-level merge on the same file.
Humans and agents use one protocol — the CLI and in-document syntax for people, MCP tools for agents — over the same synced folder.
Where your current tool still fits better
- If end-to-end encrypted vault sync is a requirement, Obsidian Sync advertises AES-256 end-to-end encryption and kutl does not claim E2EE. kutl's privacy story is self-hosting the relay plus TLS transport, not end-to-end encryption.
- kutl has no native mobile client. On a phone or tablet, the answer is the kutlhub web editor in a browser, not a background daemon syncing the vault on the device.
- If you want a single first-party product with built-in mobile apps and one vendor for everything, Obsidian Sync is the more turnkey option. kutl is a daemon plus a relay you either run or get hosted.
- "Conflict copies" are not eliminated outright — concurrent text edits merge, but two distinct files claiming one name will still produce a notes.kutl-conflict-<id>.md copy by design, so nothing is lost.
FAQ
Is there an alternative to Obsidian Sync that actually merges Markdown edits?
kutl syncs your vault as plain Markdown on disk and merges concurrent edits to a text file into one file. The merge is order-independent across devices. Name collisions between two different files are preserved as a separate copy rather than discarded.
Can I self-host Obsidian vault sync with kutl?
Yes. The relay that coordinates sync is self-hostable as a single binary, so your notes stay on infrastructure you control. There is also kutlhub, a hosted relay, if you'd rather not run a server.
Does kutl need a plugin in Obsidian?
No. kutl works at the filesystem level — a daemon watches your vault folder and syncs the files. Obsidian reads and writes those files normally, with nothing installed inside it.
Does kutl encrypt my notes end-to-end?
kutl does not claim end-to-end encryption. Its privacy model is self-hosting the relay so your data stays on your own infrastructure, with TLS protecting the connection to a remote relay. If end-to-end encryption is a hard requirement, kutl is not the right fit.
Can Claude Code or another agent edit my vault without creating sync conflicts?
Concurrent edits to a Markdown file merge, so an agent editing a note on a server and you editing it on your laptop produce one merged file, not a conflict copy. File-level outcomes such as renames and deletes follow kutl's documented conflict rules.
How do two people share a vault with kutl?
Both run the kutl daemon pointed at the synced folder and join the same space. Edits to the same note merge in real time; there is no per-seat subscription required to run kutl yourself.