Author: Dries Buytaert (founder of Drupal) Published: 2026 (dri.es) Source: Readwise highlights
Summary
Buytaert describes a working PKM practice grounded in three commitments: plain text on disk, public-by-default with selective encryption, and topic pages that compound over time. The system is built on Obsidian but the choice is incidental — what matters is that the substrate is plain Markdown files he owns. He treats notes not as final conclusions but as ongoing conversations with himself; the value comes from connections that emerge between notes written months apart. The article makes a subtle but important privacy claim: the right default is public, with encryption applied only to sensitive material — inverting the privacy-first instinct.
Key Takeaways
- "If a note can be public, it should be." The default-public stance treats publishing as the friction-reducing choice for most knowledge work; encryption is reserved for genuinely sensitive content. This inverts the common privacy-first assumption.
- Selective encryption as a privacy pattern. "Encrypt – Encrypts specific notes with password protection. Useful for sensitive information that I want in my knowledge base but need to keep secure." Sensitive content stays in the same vault, not in a separate system — but it is locked at the file level.
- Plain text is sovereignty. "One of the things I appreciate most about Obsidian is that it stores notes as plain text Markdown files on my local filesystem. Plain text files give you full control. I sync them with iCloud, back them up myself, and track changes using Git."
- "Files over apps" — long-term durability. "Note-taking apps come and go, companies fold, subscription models shift. But plain text files remain accessible. A Markdown file you write today will open just fine in 2050." Cites Steph Ango (Obsidian CEO) on the philosophy.
- Topic pages, not project notes. Buytaert organizes around durable topic pages ("Coordination challenges in Open Source", "Solar-powered websites", "Open Source startup lessons", "How to be a good dad") — hundreds of them. Each is added when "an idea feels worth tracking."
- Notes are ongoing conversations, not conclusions. "I do not treat my notes as final conclusions, but as ongoing conversations with myself. Sometimes two notes written months apart suddenly connect in a way I had not noticed before."
- Writing is thinking. "Writing is how I think. Writing pushes me to think, and it is the process I rely on to flesh out ideas."
- Compounding through accumulation. "When notes accumulate over time, connections start to emerge. Ideas compound slowly. What starts as scattered thoughts or quotes becomes the foundation for blog posts or projects."
- Obsidian is a thinking environment, not a tool. "Obsidian is not just a note-taking tool. It is a thinking environment. It gives me a place to collect ideas, let them mature, and return to them when the time is right."
- "Naturalness" over "perfect organization". "I do not aim for perfect organization. I aim for a system that feels natural and helps me notice connections I would otherwise miss."
Concepts Mentioned
- Plain text + Markdown on local filesystem
- "Files over apps" philosophy (Steph Ango)
- Selective encryption pattern
- Default-public posture
- Topic pages as durable accumulation units
- Notes-as-conversations
- Writing as thinking
- Compounding through slow accumulation
- iCloud sync + Git versioning + manual backups
- Obsidian as thinking environment vs. tool
Entities Mentioned
- Dries Buytaert (author, founder of Drupal)
- Steph Ango (Obsidian CEO; "files over apps" philosophy)
- Obsidian (the substrate)
- iCloud, Git (sync and versioning layers)
Relevance to PKM
This source operationalizes several wiki articles. For Plain Text and Interoperability, it provides a working example of the "files over apps" philosophy in daily use, including the long-term claim ("readable in 2050"). For Local-First and Data Sovereignty, it is concrete evidence — Buytaert chose iCloud+Git+manual backups over any single-app sync, and the value he extracts from that is real.
For Privacy in PKM and the new Selective Encryption article, Buytaert is the canonical practitioner: he holds sensitive content alongside public content and encrypts only the former. This is a richer privacy model than "make it all private" — it preserves the discoverability and shareability of most knowledge while protecting what genuinely needs protection.
For Public Learning, the "if a note can be public, it should be" principle is one of the strongest articulations of public-by-default in the corpus. It also connects to Idea Emergence and Compounding Knowledge via the explicit observation that ideas compound when notes accumulate over time.
Open Questions
- How does Buytaert decide what to encrypt vs leave plain? Is the boundary stable or does it drift?
- The "if a note can be public, it should be" rule pushes against Sensitive Information Boundaries — where do they collide?
- How many topic pages before the system becomes unwieldy? Buytaert says "hundreds" — is there a ceiling?
- Does the topic-page-first organization scale to project work, or is it complementary to a separate project layer?
References
- Original article: Dries Buytaert, "How I Collect and Connect Ideas" (dri.es, 2026) — Readwise capture
- Steph Ango, "File Over App" (stephango.com, 2023)