Home › Compare › nodegoals vs Obsidian Canvas
nodegoals vs Obsidian Canvas: cards that know they're tasks
Obsidian Canvas is the spatial view of a note-taker's vault: cards, notes, links and groups on an infinite board, all stored as local Markdown and JSON. nodegoals is a spatial planner: the cards are tasks the app understands, an AI assistant drafts the board from your notes, and the same plan reads as an outline. Here's who each is for.
Short version: Choose Obsidian Canvas if your thinking lives in a vault of linked notes and you want to arrange those notes spatially, with local files and plugins. Choose nodegoals if the cards on your canvas are things to do, and you want statuses, sub-tasks, due dates and a doc view without building the system yourself.
Side-by-side
| Capability | nodegoals | Obsidian Canvas |
|---|---|---|
| Core model | Node graph of tasks: project → task → sub-task | Canvas of notes, cards and groups |
| Cards are real tasks (status, due date, next action) | Yes | No — a card is text or a note; tasks need the Tasks plugin |
| AI builds a plan from pasted notes | Yes (15 free credits / month) | Only via community plugins and your own API key |
| Doc / outline view of the same plan | Yes, one tap | No (the canvas and the notes are separate views) |
| Local-first files you own | Cloud account; export to JSON/PDF | Yes — Markdown and .canvas files on disk |
| Link to a knowledge base of notes | Notes live on the task | Yes, the vault is the point |
| Sync across devices | Built in | Obsidian Sync (paid) or your own |
| Free | Yes, no card | Yes for personal use |
Obsidian's plugin ecosystem moves quickly; what needs a plugin today may be built in tomorrow — check their site.
Where each one wins
Choose nodegoals if…
- The cards on your board are tasks, and you want the app to know which are done, late or stale.
- You want AI to draft the plan from notes, a document or a spoken description.
- You want the plan as a clean outline or PDF when it's time to execute or share.
- You don't want to assemble a task system from plugins.
Choose Obsidian Canvas if…
- Your work is thinking and writing, and tasks are a by-product of notes.
- Local files you own, in plain Markdown, are non-negotiable.
- You already have a vault and want a spatial view of it.
- You enjoy building your own workflow from plugins and templates.
The real difference: a canvas of notes versus a map of work
Obsidian Canvas is a brilliant way to see a set of notes — lay out an argument, cluster research, sketch how ideas relate. The cards are inert on purpose: they're text and links, and the canvas never asks whether anything on it is finished. For a planner that's the missing half. nodegoals keeps the spatial layout but gives every card a status, a due date, sub-tasks and a next action, so the map can tell you what's overdue, what's untouched, and what to do next.
The other difference is where the board comes from. In nodegoals you paste notes, drop in a document or describe a goal, and AI Import drafts the project map — then the doc view shows the same plan as an outline you can edit and export. In Obsidian you build the canvas card by card, which is right for thinking and slow for planning.
FAQ
Is nodegoals an Obsidian Canvas alternative?
For planning and tracking projects spatially, yes. nodegoals is not a note-taking app or a vault: there is no Markdown on disk, no backlinks between notes, no plugin system. If your centre of gravity is your notes, stay in Obsidian and use nodegoals for the projects.
Can I bring an Obsidian canvas into nodegoals?
Copy the text of the cards (or the outline of the notes) and paste it into AI Import; nodegoals turns it into a connected task map. There is no .canvas import.
Does nodegoals keep my data locally?
Your projects are cached in the browser or app and synced to your account in the cloud. You can export any project to JSON or PDF at any time, and delete your account in the app.
Does nodegoals have a free plan?
Yes — the whole planner and 15 AI credits a month, no card. Paid plans are $12 and $29 a month.