---
title: "Decision: Drop [[wikilinks]] permanently"
url: https://mdfy.app/DDxqHKdd
updated: 2026-05-14T18:15:49.480Z
source: "mdfy.app"
---
# Decision: Drop [[wikilinks]] permanently

> See /spec for the public statement. This is the internal "why" we don't surface in marketing.

## What we're not building

`[[wikilinks]]` syntax. No `[[target]]`, no `[[target|alias]]`, no autocomplete on `[[`, no per-page backlinks panel built off literal-text matches. None of it.

## The argument from the Obsidian side

"You can't be a wiki without wikilinks. Every wiki shape since Ward Cunningham has had them." True. We're not building a wiki shape. We're building a hub shape, which is wiki-adjacent but doesn't require the same syntax bet.

## Three reasons I went the other way

1. **The links should come from the AI, not the markup.** mdfy already maintains a `concept_index` and `concept_relations` graph that's automatically populated by the AI capture passes. The graph is more interesting than what a user remembers to write inside `[[ ]]`. Putting both up would be redundant and the manual one would always lose.
2. **Wikilinks are a friction tax on AI agents.** When Claude or Cursor reads a markdown doc with `[[]]` syntax, it can't follow the link without the wiki-context (`[[]]` is not standard markdown; the resolution is hub-specific). Plain inline links (`[label](https://mdfy.app/d/abc123)`) work everywhere.
3. **It would freeze us into a wiki-product mental model.** Once users have `[[]]` reflexes, every UI decision down the line gets compared to Obsidian. That's the wrong reference for cross-AI memory.

## What we ship instead

- **Auto-generated "Related in this hub"** panel under every doc, computed from the concept overlap with sibling docs.
- **Concept index page** at `/hub/{slug}/concepts`, browsable.
- **Linting** for hubs (orphans, likely-duplicates, title mismatches).

## What I expect to hear

"Power users will hate this." Yes — the subset of power users who already think in `[[]]`. I'm willing to lose them. The mass market is everyone who's never used Obsidian, and for them the AI-derived link is strictly better than the markup they'd have to learn.