Best Alternatives to Smart Connections

Local-first AI embeddings — bge-micro-v2 model runs entirely in Obsidian; vectors stored alongside vault. Compare 10 similar free AI tools.

1. Smart Connections — Local-first AI embeddings for Obsidian (Free: Free; bge-micro-v2 locally)
2. Obsidian — Local-first knowledge base — AI daemon-friendly via REST API (Free: Free personal use; plain markdown)
3. Cloudflare Workers AI — Edge-deployed AI with free vector DB (Free: 10,000 neurons/day; 5M vectors free)
4. Claudia — Claude Code + Obsidian + local SQLite/vector memory with provenance chains tracing facts to source documents (Free: Open source)
5. Obsidian Local REST API — HTTPS REST API for Obsidian vault — read/write/append notes, daily notes, search; 1.7K stars (Free: Free plugin; self-hosted at localhost:27124)
6. Obsidian Copilot — Vault-wide RAG inside Obsidian — 50+ LLM providers, 3.2K stars; bring your own API key (Free: Free; BYOK)
7. Obsidian Copilot — Vault-wide RAG inside Obsidian — 50+ LLM providers (Free: Free plugin; bring your API key)
8. Khoj — Most mature open second-brain AI — native Obsidian integration, semantic search, deep research (Free: OSS; Docker/Python + Obsidian plugin)
9. Khoj — Most mature open-source second-brain AI — Obsidian integration, semantic search, deep research, scheduled automations (Free: Full OSS; Docker or pip install + Obsidian plugin)
10. Chatbase — Custom AI chatbots for SMBs — embed anywhere, train on your data (Free: Free: 100 msgs/month; train on data)

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