YAOS

A zero-terminal, real-time sync engine for Obsidian, powered by your own Cloudflare Worker.

Your notes sync live across devices, with CRDT merge semantics instead of conflicted-copy workflows, delayed file sync, or database-heavy self-hosting.

No terminal, no .env files, no database setup required.

How it compares

Most ways to sync Obsidian pick a trade-off. YAOS picks none.

YAOS uses Yjs CRDTs to keep one live vault state moving across devices instead of asking them to take polite turns uploading files and hoping nothing collides.

If you want the official, fully managed experience, pay for Obsidian Sync and support the team. If you want a fast, self-hosted, local-first alternative that you fully control, this is YAOS.

Get started

YAOS has two parts: an Obsidian plugin and a small Cloudflare server you deploy to your own account. The Worker setup page walks you through the remaining steps, so you don't need to memorize this.

1. Deploy your server Click Deploy to Cloudflare above. Cloudflare creates a Worker in your account.

2. Claim your server Open the Worker URL. Click Claim to lock the server to you and generate your setup token.

3. Install the plugin YAOS is in the Obsidian Marketplace review queue. To install today, add it through BRAT: open BRAT settings → Add Beta plugin → paste kavinsood/yaos.

4. Connect your vault From the claim page, open the setup link or scan the QR code. YAOS fills in the connection details automatically.

That's it. Your vault is syncing.

Attachments and snapshots

Text sync works out of the box. To sync images, PDFs, and other attachments, add a Cloudflare R2 bucket — it takes about a minute.

R2 also enables daily automatic snapshots and on-demand point-in-time backups. You can browse snapshots, diff against current state, and selectively restore individual files. If you skip R2, text sync still works — you just won't have attachment sync or snapshots.

Updating your server

YAOS is designed to be zero-terminal, but because you own your infrastructure, you control when updates apply.

A one-time setup installs a GitHub Actions workflow in your deployment repo. After that, updates are a single click.

1. One-time: click Initialize updater in YAOS settings → Advanced. GitHub opens with a pre-filled workflow file. Commit it.
2. Update: YAOS notifies you when a new version ships. Click Open update action → Run workflow with update.
3. Rollback: same workflow, change action to revert.

Some releases require manual migration steps. The updater will abort with a clear warning — read the release notes before retrying. Re-clicking Deploy to Cloudflare is not a safe update path for a stateful server; YAOS uses a Git-driven workflow so the same Worker identity, Durable Object bindings, and history are preserved.

Works with scripts and AI agents

Because Obsidian vaults are just local Markdown files, YAOS plays unusually well with scripts, CLI tools, and AI agents that edit files directly on disk. The CRDT state stays aligned with the filesystem, so changes from any source — git, shell scripts, agents writing to disk — propagate cleanly across devices instead of falling back to conflicted-copy workflows.

If you're building agentic workflows on top of Obsidian vaults, YAOS gives you the sync infrastructure so you don't have to wire up your own.

How it works

YAOS keeps your vault as normal local files, while also maintaining a shared real-time state for sync.

1. Each markdown file gets a stable ID and a Y.Text CRDT for its content.
2. All per-file CRDTs live inside one shared vault-level Y.Doc — this keeps cross-file operations transactional. A folder rename is atomic across all files; the vault structure can't tear.
3. Live editor edits flow through a Yjs + CodeMirror binding.
4. Each vault maps to one Durable Object sync room. The shared state survives server restarts and hibernation.
5. Offline edits are stored in IndexedDB and merge on reconnect.
6. Attachments sync separately via content-addressed R2 storage instead of being forced through the text CRDT.
7. Daily and on-demand snapshots exist as a safety net.

In practice, that means your vault still exists locally as normal files, Obsidian keeps behaving like Obsidian, and YAOS keeps the disk mirror and the shared CRDT state aligned instead of asking devices to take polite turns uploading files later.

Engineering

This repository keeps deep architecture notes under engineering/. These aren't afterthoughts — they capture the design rationale, trade-offs, and failure modes behind a production CRDT sync engine on Cloudflare Workers.

• Monolithic vault CRDT — Why one vault-level Y.Doc, what we gain (ACID cross-file transactions), and what we consciously trade off.
• Filesystem bridge — How noisy Obsidian file events are converted into safe CRDT updates with dirty-set draining and content-acknowledged suppression.
• Checkpoint + journal persistence — The storage-engine rewrite that removed full-state rewrites and introduced state-vector-anchored delta journaling.
• Attachment sync — Native Worker proxy uploads, capability negotiation, and bounded fan-out under Cloudflare connection limits.
• Zero-config auth — Browser claim UX, obsidian://yaos deep-link pairing, and env-token override behavior.
• Zero-ops update pipeline — Why detached deploy repos need bootstrap injection, reusable workflows, and migration safety gates.
• Warts and limits — Canonical limits, safety invariants, and the pragmatic compromises currently in production.

Limits

YAOS is optimized for personal or small-team note vaults, not for arbitrarily huge text archives. The monolithic Y.Doc design gives excellent real-time ergonomics and simpler cross-file behavior, but it creates a practical ceiling for very large vaults.

If your vault is normal notes, drafts, research, and attachments, YAOS is a great fit. If you want to sync giant text dumps or archival datasets, a simpler file-sync tool is a better choice.

Rule of thumb: around 50 MB of raw text (not counting attachments like images and PDFs) is a comfortable target.

Configuration

After enabling, go to Settings → YAOS.

Manual connection and Advanced sections are available in the settings UI when you need to inspect or override connection details.

Commands

Access via command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+P):

Troubleshooting

"Unauthorized" errors: Token mismatch between plugin and server. Check both match exactly.

"R2 not configured": The server doesn't have a YAOS_BUCKET binding yet. See the R2 setup video.

Cloudflare deploy/dashboard issues: If build queue or dashboard behavior is flaky, see server troubleshooting notes, including the wrangler.toml R2-binding fallback.

Sync stops on mobile: Use "Reconnect to sync server" command. Check you have network connectivity.

Files not syncing: Check exclude patterns. Files over max size are skipped. Use debug logging to see what's happening, and then raise an issue on GitHub.

Conflicts after offline edits: CRDTs merge automatically but the result depends on operation order. Review merged content if needed.

Server receipt is unknown or waiting: Reconnect first. If local cache replay timed out, wait for the vault to finish loading and reconnect again. If you recently reset, reclaimed, or migrated the server, run Clear local server-receipt state from the command palette; Phase A receipt state cannot automatically detect every same-vault server reset.

Diagnostics: Use Show sync debug info for local inspection. Safe diagnostics exports redact server URL, vault ID, device name, and vault paths; filename-inclusive diagnostics require explicit confirmation before writing.

Current limits

YAOS currently syncs Markdown text through the CRDT engine and attachments through R2 when configured. It does not try to sync every .obsidian setting/plugin file. Empty folders are not synced in v0 because the CRDT tracks files and blob references, not folder-only objects. Avoid running another live file-sync engine such as iCloud, Dropbox, Syncthing, or Git auto-sync against the same vault at the same time unless you understand the interaction.

License

0-BSD

Acknowledgements: The initial landing page design was heavily inspired by and utilizes assets from the excellent folks at superwhisper. Huge thanks to their creator for permitting temporary use while we fully redesign. (P.S. They are hiring!).