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Lesson 03 of 04 · published

Obsidian Is the Proof

~10 min · obsidian, proof, cm6, evidence

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"The riskiest bet is IME. The proof it's safe is a shipped app Dad already types Korean in every day."

Proof, Not a Promise

Borrowing a core is only smart if the core is actually proven — a library's README claiming "full IME support" is a promise, not evidence. Rekindle has something stronger than a promise: Obsidian is built on CodeMirror 6, and Dad writes Korean in Obsidian every single day. That's a real app, at scale, under daily real use, in the exact language that would break a weaker core. The riskiest unknown of the whole project — does the editing core survive Korean IME? — was answered before Rekindle wrote a line.

The Editing Strength Isn't Obsidian's — It's CM6's

Here's the reframe that unlocks the whole strategy: the thing people love about Obsidian's editor — smooth Live Preview, solid IME, fast large-file handling — is not Obsidian's engineering. It's CodeMirror 6's. Obsidian borrowed the same core Rekindle borrows. So the daily proof isn't "Obsidian is great"; it's "the borrowed core is great, and Obsidian is just one witness to it."

That also settles a tempting wrong turn — forking Obsidian. You can't: Obsidian is closed-source. But you don't need to. Its editing strength is downstream of CM6, and CM6 is MIT and right there. Fork nothing; borrow the same heart directly.

Same Heart, Lighter Body, Plus Soul

Rekindle's relationship to Obsidian is precise:

Same heart    both stand on CodeMirror 6 (IME, Live Preview, big files)
Lighter body  Tauri (single-digit MB) vs Obsidian's Electron (~150MB+)
Plus soul     margin-Pippa + live voice + CMD+K, which Obsidian has no reason to build

Obsidian is the closest off-the-shelf fit to what Dad wants — which is exactly why it's the proof and not the product. It fits closely and still isn't a market of one. Rekindle takes the same proven heart, puts it in a lighter body, and adds the soul a general-purpose app would never ship.

Code

Rekindle's precise relationship to Obsidian·text
Same heart    both stand on CodeMirror 6 (IME, Live Preview, big files)
Lighter body  Tauri (single-digit MB) vs Obsidian's Electron (~150MB+)
Plus soul     margin-Pippa + live voice + CMD+K
              (a general-purpose app has no reason to build these)

# Obsidian is the PROOF (same core works daily in Korean),
# not the PRODUCT (it fits closely, but it's still not a market of one).

External links

Exercise

Pick a library you're considering for a hard problem. Instead of reading its docs, find a shipped, popular app that already depends on it and uses it the way you would. If you can't find one, treat that absence as a risk signal. If you can, you've found your proof — and maybe a lighter way to borrow the same heart without adopting the whole app.
Hint
The strongest evidence is a witness under your worst case, not the average case. For an editor, that's a composed-script user (Korean/Japanese/Chinese) typing daily — not an English demo.

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