I liked Obsidian. I liked Cursor. But I kept switching between the two and never fully settled in either. Obsidian's markdown editing felt great, but it had no AI chat that felt native to me, and honestly I spent way too much time finding the best theme and best plugins. Cursor, on the other hand, had the AI sidebar I wanted, but it's a code editor and writing long-form text in it was exhausting.
I wanted one app that did both. And I didn't want to pay for another subscription just to get AI in my notes.
So I started building Cushion. Not as some grand plan, just to solve my own problem. When I needed dictation, I added local speech-to-text. When I wanted to chat with AI while writing, I integrated OpenCode (with MCP, skills, agents, the whole thing). Diagrams? Excalidraw. PDFs? Built a viewer. NotebookLM? Plugged it in. It kept growing from there.
It was only for me at first. But at some point I figured, why not open source it. So here it is. Use it, fork it, break it apart, whatever you want. Would love feedback to keep growing Cushion !!
The 'built it for myself first' origin story is always the most honest. The Obsidian + Cursor gap is real. Does it work well for non-technical writers too, or is it still pretty dev-oriented?
This is good, even i use both and have to jump between them.
One question though: How does AI chat handle context, is it only for currently open file?
About Cushion on Product Hunt
“Opensource AI note taking app ”
Cushion launched on Product Hunt on April 2nd, 2026 and earned 92 upvotes and 9 comments, placing #20 on the daily leaderboard. A local-first markdown workspace with integrated AI chat. Write, organize, and think. All in one place.
Cushion was featured in Writing (59.1k followers), Notes (8.3k followers) and GitHub (41.2k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 33.3k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Cushion?
Cushion was hunted by Boyuan Chen. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how Cushion stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Boyuan Chen