Introduction to Fable

Fable is a fast, local-first knowledge base for linked Markdown notes. Your writing lives in a folder of plain text files that you own outright, and Fable is the lens that makes those files searchable, linkable, and a pleasure to work in.

If you already keep an Obsidian vault, Fable opens it directly. Nothing is imported, converted, or locked away. Fable reads and writes the same files, so you can switch between apps, edit notes in any text editor, and keep your work for decades without depending on any one program.

A knowledge base built on plain files

Every note in Fable is an ordinary UTF-8 Markdown file with a .md extension. There is no database that owns your content and no proprietary wrapper around it. Open any note outside Fable and you will find readable text:

# The Feynman technique

A technique for learning by explaining an idea in plain language.
Related to [[Spaced repetition]] and tagged #learning.

> [!tip] Teach to learn
> If you cannot explain it simply, you do not understand it yet.

Because the files are the source of truth, everything else Fable shows you, the graph, backlinks, search results, the tag list, is derived from those files and rebuilt as they change. Delete Fable tomorrow and your notes are still just a folder of Markdown on your disk.

Your files, your folder

Fable is built around a few firm commitments:

• Local-first. Your vault is a folder on your own computer. Fable works fully offline and needs no account to download, install, or use.
• Plain text forever. Notes are Markdown, attachments are ordinary files, and configuration is human-readable JSON. Formats you can read without Fable.
• The file system is the truth. Edit a note in another editor, move a file in your OS file manager, or restore one from a backup, and Fable reflects the change automatically, with no restart.
• Yours to keep. No lock-in, no server that has to be running, no format that only one app understands.

Obsidian-compatible by design

Fable is a ground-up app, but it treats the Obsidian vault format as a compatibility contract rather than a loose inspiration. That means the things that make up a vault all work the same way:

• [[Wikilinks]], aliases, heading links and block references.
• Obsidian Flavored Markdown, including ==highlights==, callouts, tasks and math.
• YAML frontmatter properties, inline #tags, and the tags/aliases/cssclasses keys.
• .canvas boards in the open JSON Canvas format.
• The .obsidian configuration folder, so your settings travel with your vault.

A real Obsidian vault opens unchanged in Fable, and a vault you build in Fable opens in Obsidian. If you are migrating, there is nothing to convert.

Who Fable is for

Fable suits anyone who wants durable, connected notes without handing their thinking to a cloud service: researchers and students building a body of knowledge, writers drafting in Markdown, engineers keeping a personal wiki, and anyone who has outgrown a single long document. If you value speed, ownership, and files that will still open in ten years, Fable is for you.

How Fable compares

Tools like Notion and Roam Research store your content in a hosted, account-based block database. They are powerful, but your notes live on someone else's server in a format only that product fully understands. Fable takes the opposite bet: a local folder of plain Markdown that you control, closer in spirit to tools like Logseq, but presented as a document editor over flat, human-readable files.

The trade is deliberate. You give up built-in real-time cloud collaboration in exchange for durability, privacy, and ownership. Your notes are portable text on your own disk, not rows in a database you rent.

What is not in Fable yet

Ready to start? The next pages walk you through creating or opening a vault and finding your way around the window.