Scopic vs Obsidian
Your links don't know what they mean.
Obsidian organises your notes around links. Scopic organises your thinking around the relationships between things: what connects, how it connects, and what that means.
Join waitlistScopic map view
Screenshot: spatial map with named, typed connections between elements
Elements placed deliberately. Every connection named, typed, and openable as its own record.
Obsidian graph view
Screenshot: Obsidian graph view — dot cloud derived from wikilinks
A picture of your notes' link structure. Generated by the tool. Carries no data about what the links mean.
In Obsidian, a link tells you two notes are connected. In Scopic, a connection tells you how: what that relationship is, what it carries, and what else belongs to it.
What it gets right
Obsidian starts from a correct premise: that connections matter as much as documents. The graph view exists because someone understood that the links between notes say something important about how you think. The local-first model means your files stay yours: plaintext, portable, readable in any editor, working offline. For writers and researchers who know what they want to write, it stays out of the way.
The plugin ecosystem has done things the core team never anticipated. Dataview turns your frontmatter into queryable tables. Canvas adds a spatial layer. Because the files are plaintext, a community of builders can extend Obsidian in directions that would take years to build into a product.
Where it stops
Links in Obsidian carry no data. The graph is derived from link-parsing: it shows which notes link to which, but the links themselves hold nothing. You cannot open the link between two notes and add a type, a date, a confidence level, or a source. You cannot filter the graph to show only links of a certain kind. The link is a navigation shortcut, not a record.
The graph view was never meant to be a working space. It is a picture of your notes' structure, useful for orientation and not for thinking through a problem. In Scopic, the map is where you work. You move things, draw connections, name them, and the database and page views stay in sync with the same underlying structure.
Name what connects, not just that it does
In Scopic, every connection has a name, a type, and a notes page of its own. Draw a line between two elements and it becomes a record: name it, add a date, a source, a confidence level. Open it and it shows its own properties alongside the two things it connects. In Obsidian, a link is a navigation shortcut. It carries nothing.
Screenshot: named connection open as a record, showing type, date, and notes fields
The map you build, not the map you observe
In Scopic, you place elements, draw named connections, and arrange the map to show what matters. The structure you build is the same structure you can filter in the database and expand on each element's page. Obsidian's graph is produced by the tool from your links. You do not build it. The map is not a picture of your notes. It is where you work.
Screenshot: spatial map with named connections, elements arranged deliberately
Filter by relationship, not by file
In Scopic, every connection type is queryable. Show only connections named "blocks", or "funds", or "requires". Filter the map to a single relationship type and see the network it creates. The database view holds every connection as a row you can sort and open. In Obsidian, the graph shows all links or none.
Screenshot: map filtered to one connection type, showing only that relationship network
What people say
Switched from Obsidian after four years. The graph in Obsidian shows me what connects. Scopic shows me how it connects. That's not the same tool.
3 weeks ago
I kept opening Obsidian's graph to feel organised and then going back to my notes to actually work. In Scopic the map is where I work. Didn't realise how much that matters.
1 month ago
Tried to map a research project in Obsidian. Got a hairball. Tried the same project in Scopic. Got a map I can actually read and navigate. Moving everything.
2 months ago
Built a stakeholder map for a policy project in Scopic. The connections have names and types. We can filter to show only "influences" or only "blocks". That level of specificity is genuinely useful.
5 weeks ago
What I kept wanting in Obsidian was to open a link and see what it actually means. In Scopic every connection is a record you can read, annotate, and build on.
2 months ago
The graph in Obsidian was always a celebration of how connected my notes were, not a tool for thinking. Scopic is a tool.
3 months ago
At a glance
| Scopic | Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|
| Connections you can name and describe | ✓ | — |
| Add custom properties to a connection | ✓ | — |
| Filter the map by connection type | ✓ | — |
| Map as a primary working space | ✓ | — |
| Database view of all elements | ✓ | ◐ Via Dataview plugin |
| Page view for freeform writing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Local-first, works offline | — | ✓ |
| Plaintext files, fully portable | — | ✓ |
| Plugin ecosystem | — | ✓ |