nTilia: field Markdown editor — an Obsidian alternative for missions

Obsidian: personal knowledge management (PKM), linked notes, graph, deep customisation via thousands of plugins. Ideal at the desk for a “second brain”.

nTilia: offline-first field capture — Mission folders, on-device transcription, private GPS map, vault on the device, bilingual journal with AI that you approve. Ideal when the network drops and an interview must not end as an orphan file.

Both respect open Markdown. It is not the same job. Plugins, graph, lifelong personal wiki → Obsidian. Writing on assignment off-network → nTilia.

In the field, writing does not look like desk work. A visit, a dictation between actions, a photo, a place, a timezone. The network is not a right: it drops, returns, or is missing when you need it.

Yet most writing and transcription tools — Notion, Google Docs, cloud apps, and many AI workflows — assume the opposite: a connection, a remote account, audio sent to a server, sometimes a closed format. For an association, a journalist, a researcher or a freelance on mission, that is not a comfort detail. It is memory that drifts, sources that leave the device, notes you may not open in ten years.

nTilia was built for that use: capture here, encrypt here, transcribe here — and publish only what the author decides, article by article.

nTilia is for people who write away from the desk — or who must be able to.

The format is not proprietary. You import .md files, you export a ZIP (Markdown notes, audio, Mission metadata). You leave whenever you want, with everything.

That is the same open base as Obsidian, iA Writer or Typora — the difference is not the Markdown dialect, it is when the tool must win: on the road, not only at the desk.

Full feature catalogue: ntilia.com/en/features.

Five days in Maroua. A portrait in Brussels. Without a container, everything mixes. With a Mission, the trip has an envelope: notes, audio, photos, private map, export. Nothing else.

You create the Mission before departure (name, place, timezone). New notes land there. Existing notes stay in “Unassigned” — nothing is filed for you.

Notes with GPS land on a private map. The public journal does not see it. Before you lose the network, Prepare to leave runs sync + ZIP on this device — for an outage, not for a checkpoint.

Capture, dictation, takes and editing work with no network. Transcription can run on the device (local Whisper): audio does not have to leave the phone to be transcribed.

By default, everything stays on the device. Notes marked “device” never sync. With the vault on: notes, takes and missions are encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM, key derived with PBKDF2) in IndexedDB.

Once signed in: notes and takes leave privately only when nTilia is open, the vault unlocked, and a network is present — not from a locked pocket. Once synced, nTilia can read them for sync and the journal. Publishing remains a choice, article by article.

From Pro: safe recipient (end-to-end encrypted snapshot for a newsroom / desk), Travel Mode, Empty / Burn everything. Limit stated clearly: nTilia is not the whole phone, and IndexedDB is not a forensic wipe.

When the network returns, you refine and, if you decide, you publish. The nTilia journal is designed as a source of truth: sober, bilingual FR ↔ EN, syndicable to WordPress or Ghost (from Pro).

Each article exposes a Cite block: APA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS, JATS — one-click copy. The DOI, when it exists, replaces the URL in the formats.

Each “Update” archives the snapshot that was live. Readers browse the chain, compare, and you can republish an earlier version; a correction note appears under the date. Search-engine indexing (NewsArticle, IndexNow, news sitemap) is reserved for Pro.

For ecology, public health, social sciences: readings offline, abstract and co-authors declared in frontmatter (name, ORCID, affiliation, role), Academic style (serif, framed abstract, numbered figures/tables, margin notes, preprint PDF).

While writing: local Better CSL JSON / BibTeX bibliography and [@citekey] autocomplete — private sources, nothing sent to the cloud to cite. On publish: RIS, JATS, Highwire tags, ScholarlyArticle JSON-LD.

From Pro: one-click Zenodo deposit (PDF + Markdown source, CC licence) — the DOI returns under Cite and into APA, BibTeX, RIS, JATS and JSON-LD. nTilia replaces neither the journal nor the institutional repository: it makes the notebook citable.

The Research profile (Settings → Journal) renames missions to projects, suggests Academic style and shows the AI mention as soon as a passage was generated.

In the editor, type /: spelling, translation, personal voice, publish checklist, tones (journalist / field, donor update, team brief…), sources, FAQ. Every proposal goes through Before / After. Nothing is applied without explicit Accept.

The free plan includes weekly AI credits; every action is triggered by you, never in the background. Generative writing (continue, SEO, article translation) and local Whisper unlock from Pro. Pro+ adds sourced web search and a background dossier (place context — for you, not injected into the note).

Free is enough to write, capture, encrypt and publish a citable journal. Pro unlocks news indexing, CMS syndication, safe recipient, local Whisper and volume. Pro+ adds custom domain, background dossier, sourced web search and more credits. Teams use the Newsroom offer, on quote.

Reference table (excerpt) — full detail on the features page.

Obsidian is a powerful Markdown PKM. nTilia is an offline-first notebook for field missions. Comparing the two makes sense for SEO and tool choice — provided we do not promise “better ranking” or claim to replace Obsidian’s graph.

Obsidian wins at the desk: backlinks, graph, Canvas, plugins. nTilia wins on the road: Mission, offline dictation, photo at the market, private GPS map, Prepare to leave, sync only with vault unlocked.

“I can’t find my 2023 note” → Obsidian. “I’m in Maroua, no network, the interview must not end as an orphan file” → nTilia.

Searches for “Obsidian alternative”, “offline Markdown editor” or “Markdown for journalists” often cross iA Writer, Typora, Bear, Craft, Notion or Logseq. Here is an honest reading, without a marketing scorecard.

The answers below follow nTilia’s public product framing — also useful for search engines and assistants that summarise a page.

In Ewondo, a language of Cameroon, Ntil means the writer. nTilia is a SamionX product (Belgium). It lives in support of the AWAKEN DESTINY foundation. It is not funded by donations.

100% of donations received are allocated to projects carried out in Cameroon. Only payment fees (Stripe) and bank charges are deducted by providers; the foundation takes no operating fee, its administrative costs being borne by the founders.

On the foundation site, the short story remains the news piece nTilia, a notebook for writing where the network stops. This publication is the detailed dossier — features, Obsidian comparison, plans — for those choosing a mission Markdown editor.

To decide, then write: the living catalogue of features and plans is on the product site.