Why look past Apple Notes
Apple Notes wins on convenience. It is already on the Apple devices you own, capture is instant, and it works offline. For quick personal notes it is genuinely hard to beat. The wall is AI. Connect ChatGPT to Apple Notes and it sees only the note you have open, with no durable memory across your library. Apple's own AI features stay inside Apple's apps and devices. Nothing can read across your whole library from wherever you happen to work.
There are smaller cracks too. Sharing means inviting Apple IDs rather than publishing a link. People have long reported search silently returning nothing for notes that clearly exist, and Apple acknowledged an incident where some iCloud notes went missing. None of that matters until the note you need is the one you cannot reach.
A knowledge base your AI can actually read
Hjarni is built for the notes that need to do more. You write plain Markdown in notes, folders, and tags. A built-in MCP server, hosted rather than local, lets ChatGPT, Claude, and any other MCP client search, read, and write your whole knowledge base from any operating system. Folder-level instructions tell your AI how to behave in each part of it, and every AI edit is a version you can read and revert. You can import existing Markdown to start and export everything back out whenever you want.
Apple Notes is where a thought lands. A knowledge base is where it keeps working, for you and for your AI.
What to look for
Weigh four things. Can an assistant read across your whole library, or only the note you have open. Is the storage plain Markdown you can export, or a format you would have to leave behind. Does it work beyond one ecosystem, in a browser, on whatever device your next job hands you. And does it have a built-in MCP server a remote assistant can reach, or something local you assemble and maintain. Apple Notes concedes all four by design. Each alternative above answers a different subset: Bear fixes the writing but stays on Apple hardware, Obsidian gives you the files but makes AI access your project, Notion swaps a notes app for a workspace.
When to stay on Apple Notes
Honestly, often. If your notes are quick, personal, and mostly Apple-only, Apple Notes is the right answer and its convenience is the product. Offline access, iCloud sync across your Apple devices, rich text and sketches: those are real strengths Hjarni does not match. Keeping Apple Notes for capture and moving the notes that matter into a knowledge base your AI can read is a reasonable split.