Ahmed

With the rise of AI tools, many new options are emerging that enable collaboration with AI agents for tasks like running parallel research, checking quick info, and more. This includes Notion, Proof, and many others appearing every day.

Every new tool is a chance to trap you in a closed-source system, make data access difficult, and likely expose an MCP/API for AI use while charging you for it.

I’ve always preferred simple Markdown files to track my work, notes, and writing. They’re easy to use, sync quickly, and most importantly, I own the data.

Since I’ve been using Obsidian and an instance of OpenClaw, I wanted to explore how to enable collaboration in Markdown. My goal is to leave to-do items for the AI agent to pick up and work on in parallel, then update with the results once they’re ready.

I ended up with this simple approach:

1. Ensure you’re syncing your markdown files properly. If you use Obsidian, options include Obsidian Sync, Drive, iCloud, etc. For other tools, verify that syncing works between your computer and the one where your agent operates.
2. Copy this simple script, add the paths to the repositories you want to watch, and ask your OpenClaw (or whatever agent you’re using) to run it with pm2: pm2 start ~/.openclaw/scripts/obsidian-watcher.js --name obsidian-watcher (make sure to run npm i -g chokidar and npm i -g pm2)
3. Whenever you need help from your AI agent in a markdown file, create a todo and ping your AI (using @v or feel free to change the handle in the script):

- [ ] Double-check the data above - @v

Enjoy!