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Your AI takes notes about you, without being asked.
Connect TroveFiles to Claude Desktop or Cursor, and your AI starts loading what it knows about you at the start of every chat and writing fresh notes before the chat ends. You never tell it to take notes. The memory loop closes itself.
The thing nobody tells
you about local note apps.
Obsidian was designed in the pre-AI era. The whole pitch was “your files on your laptop in markdown, forever.” Beautiful in theory. In practice, in 2026, it means:
- Your AI assistant can only reach your notes if you install Claude Code or one of the community Obsidian MCP servers (cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server, etc.) on the laptop where the vault lives, and keep all of it running. Even then, it only works on that one machine.
- Your phone can only reach the same notes through the Obsidian mobile app (with Obsidian Sync set up), and your AI assistant still can't reach them from your phone even then.
- PDFs, voice memos, screenshots, and recipes with photos all preview fine inside Obsidian, but your AI assistant can't read those formats unless you install command-line tools (ffmpeg, pdftotext) locally and wire them into your AI tool yourself.
- The whole AI-on-your-notes thing only works while that one laptop is open and on Wi-Fi.
You didn't sign up for an IT job. You signed up to remember things.
Same idea (a folder of files), built for the way you actually work now.
TroveFiles is a cloud-native knowledge base where your AI assistant can read and write directly. The core primitive is the same as Obsidian: a folder of markdown and other files you organize over time. Everything else is different.
The memory loop closes itself
When you connect TroveFiles to Claude Desktop or Cursor, your AI starts every conversation by loading what it knows about you, and ends substantive conversations by writing fresh notes about what was learned. You don't prompt it to "take notes" or "remember this." The protocol handles it. The next session your AI shows up knowing what you talked about last time, what you decided, what to carry forward. This is the actual product. Storage is the part underneath it.
Any AI client, any device
TroveFiles is hosted MCP, reachable from any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code, more added weekly). Your phone, laptop, tablet, work computer, all the same files. Open the dashboard in any browser, or talk to your AI from any client. No local server to keep running.
Time travel built in
Daily auto-backups (last 7 days kept) plus manual save points you can take before any risky change. If your AI rewrites something you cared about, click "go back." One click. With an Undo on top of that in case you change your mind.
Your AI can read non-markdown files
PDFs, voice memos, screenshots, and video preview inline in the dashboard. More importantly, your AI can read the contents, because the agent's sandbox has the actual command-line tools preinstalled (pdftotext, ffmpeg, exiftool, etc.). Ask it to summarize a research paper, transcribe a voice memo, or extract text from a screenshot. The work happens server-side, no local tooling to install.
Multiple isolated workspaces
Keep work, personal, projects, journals separate. Switch with a dropdown. No restarting an app, no juggling vault folders.
No installation
Open the dashboard in any browser. That's it. The AI assistant connects through MCP with one command. Nothing to install, nothing to update, nothing to back up yourself.
Things that get easy
once your AI can read your stuff.
- “What did I think about that book on stoicism last year?” The AI pulls your highlights and the note you wrote three weeks later. No searching.
- “Summarize my last six months of journal entries by theme.” Done in fifteen seconds, with quotes.
- “I'm planning the trip to Japan, what did I save about it?” The AI pulls every related note, half-finished itinerary, restaurant recommendation, and friend tip you ever wrote down.
- “Add this to my reading list and remind me why I added it.” Written into the right folder with context, the way you would have written it yourself if you had the time.
- “Pull my best half-finished blog drafts.” The AI reads through your drafts folder and surfaces the three with the most material to work with.
- “Listen to this voice memo and turn it into a structured note with the right tags.” The AI runs ffmpeg on the audio, transcribes it, and writes the result to your notes folder.
All of this works with Obsidian + Claude Code on the one laptop where you set it up, and where you've installed the right local tools. None of it works from your phone, your tablet, your work computer, or while that laptop is closed. That's the gap TroveFiles fills.
Where TroveFiles wins, plainly.
Comparison limited to dimensions where the two tools actually compete. (Obsidian wins on graph view, plugin ecosystem, and local-first / offline. We're not trying to take those.)
| Dimension | TroveFiles | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|
| AI assistant access | Built in. Any device, any AI client that speaks MCP (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.) | Possible via community MCP servers (cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server and others) installed locally. Runs on the one laptop where Obsidian and the server are set up; not reachable from phone, tablet, or web |
| Phone access | Any browser on any device | Mobile app for browsing your own notes, with Obsidian Sync |
| Cross-device sync | Cloud-native, included on every tier | Obsidian Sync |
| Backups / version history | Daily auto-backups (last 7 days) + manual save points, built in | 1 year of version history with Obsidian Sync |
| Undo a bad change | One click on a save point. Plus an Undo for the click itself | Restore from version history with Obsidian Sync; otherwise git, a plugin, or hope |
| AI can read non-markdown files | Yes. Real Unix tools (pdftotext, ffmpeg, exiftool) preinstalled in the agent's sandbox | Possible if you install ffmpeg / pdftotext locally and your AI tool can shell out to them |
| Server-side processing | Built in. Transcribe audio, OCR PDFs, batch-process folders without keeping your laptop awake | Not possible. Laptop must be open |
| Workspaces for separate projects | Multiple isolated, switch with a dropdown | Multiple vaults available, but you switch between them one at a time in the app |
| Installation | None. Open a browser | Download the app on every device |
| Designed for AI to use | Yes, from day one | No. Retrofitted via plugins and local tooling |
TroveFiles is for you if…
- • You want your AI assistant to actually know about your notes, from any device, not just one chat at a time on one laptop.
- • You store more than markdown. PDFs, voice memos, screenshots, and you want all of it readable by your AI without installing command-line tools yourself.
- • You want safety nets built in. Auto-backups and one-click rollback if your AI rewrites something it shouldn't.
- • You don't want to install anything. You want it to just work in any browser, on any device.
- • You want the heavy work to run on our servers, not your laptop. Transcribing audio, OCRing PDFs, batch-processing folders, all in the agent's sandbox.
Stay with Obsidian if…
- • Your favorite thing about it is the graph view, the plugins, or the act of writing in markdown locally.
- • You want your notes on your own disk, in plain markdown, available offline forever.
- • You are mostly note-taking and not asking an AI to do things with your notes.
Honest take: if any of those describe you, Obsidian is the right answer and we're not trying to take it from you.
Common questions,
straight answers.
Do I have to tell Claude to take notes about me?
No. The TroveFiles protocol guides your AI client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) to load past memory at the start of every conversation and write fresh memory before ending substantive ones. So when you ask Claude to plan a trip, think through a decision, summarize an article, or anything else meaningful, it leaves notes about what was learned. Next session it reads them. You never said "remember this" or "take notes." The loop closes itself.
Can I bring my existing Obsidian notes?
Yes. The fastest path for most people: ask your AI assistant (Claude Desktop or Cursor) to read your existing Obsidian vault folder and copy the files into TroveFiles. The AI does the upload through the API on your behalf. If you're comfortable on the command line, the SDK has a one-shot bulk-import too. Either way, your [[wikilinks]] keep working since they're just text inside the file. (A drag-and-drop importer in the dashboard is on the roadmap, but isn't shipped yet.)
What is TroveFiles, actually? Is it just cloud storage?
It's three things stacked. A filesystem (each user gets a private folder of files in the cloud, persistent across sessions). A sandboxed Unix shell (the agent has access to about 30 preinstalled command-line tools like pdftotext, ffmpeg, jq, grep, awk, python3, locked down so it can only touch your namespace and can't make outbound network calls). And a protocol layer that lets Claude Desktop or Cursor drive the whole thing. When your AI "summarizes a PDF" or "transcribes a voice memo," what actually happens is the agent runs a real pdftotext or ffmpeg command on your real file inside a sandboxed shell, and reads the result back. No magic, no bespoke parser per file type. A Unix-shaped product that AI clients know how to use.
Do I need to know what MCP is?
No. If you use Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Claude Code, you already use MCP without thinking about it. Connecting TroveFiles takes about a minute, and we have a one-line install command.
Is the free tier enough to try it?
Yes. Sign up, connect your AI client, ask it about your notes within five minutes. You will know quickly whether it fits how you work.
How private is this? Are my notes used to train models?
No. The Terms of Service explicitly state your content isn't used to train, fine-tune, or improve any AI model, by us or any third party. Each user has their own isolated namespace; your files aren't pooled with anyone else's.
What if I cancel my subscription?
You get a 30-day Export Period to download all your files after cancellation. After that, your content is removed from the live service. Routine encrypted backups roll off on their own retention cycle. Full details in the data retention policy.
Will my AI actually use my notes well, or just hallucinate?
The AI reads the actual files when you ask, the same way it reads any document you paste in. If your notes are thin, the answer is thin. If your notes are good, the answer is good. We're not adding magic; we're removing the friction of getting notes into the AI in the first place.
Is there a desktop app?
No, and intentionally. The dashboard runs in any browser at trovefiles.dev/dashboard. Phone, laptop, tablet, work computer, all the same files, no installation. Your AI assistant talks to TroveFiles directly through MCP, so most of the time you're not opening the dashboard at all.
How is this different from Obsidian + Obsidian Sync?
Obsidian Sync syncs your notes between your own devices end-to-end encrypted and gives you a year of version history per file. If your goal is to read and edit your notes on your own laptop and your own phone, that covers it. What it doesn't do is make your notes reachable to your AI assistant from any device. Claude Code, or one of the community Obsidian MCP servers, can read a synced Obsidian vault, but only on the laptop where Obsidian and the server are installed and running. Not from your phone. Not from a browser tab on your work computer. TroveFiles is hosted MCP: any AI client that speaks MCP can read and write your notes from any device, with no local server to run. If you don't want AI in your knowledge base, Obsidian + Sync covers what you need. If you do, that's where TroveFiles fits.
I love Obsidian. Should I leave it?
Only you can answer that. If your favorite thing about Obsidian is the graph view, the plugins, and the act of writing in markdown locally, keep it. We're not trying to replace that. If your favorite thing about Obsidian is "I have all my stuff in one place" and what you actually want is for your AI assistant to use that stuff from any device, that's what TroveFiles is built for. (TroveFiles has its own dashboard for browsing files, viewing markdown, and previewing PDFs / images / audio / video, but no graph view or canvas, those are still Obsidian's.) Some people use both: TroveFiles for AI memory and day-to-day browsing, Obsidian for the graph view and plugin workflows over the same files.
Five minutes to find out
if it fits how you work.
Free to start, no credit card. Connect to your AI client, ask it about your notes within a few minutes.