Steph Ango

CEO of Obsidian, writer and entrepeneur. Also known by his nickname Kepano.

What I like about Steph is not just the tools he builds, but how he thinks and shares those ideas publicly. His writing on stephango.com covers quality software, personal tools, and how to build things that last. He seems to genuinely embody the ideas he writes about, which is rare.

The Obsidian philosophy (local-first, plain files, no lock-in) feels like a direct expression of those values.

'The wilderness of my mind'. Image from Stephango's personal page

Some ideas worth reading about

File over App makes the case that durable file formats matter more than the apps that create them. Apps come and go, but a plain text file is readable forever. As he puts it: if you want your writing to be readable on a computer from the 2060s, it needs to be readable on one from the 1960s. Choose tools that produce files you own and control.

In Good Hands is about the feeling you get when someone clearly knows what they're doing. When a creator has a strong perspective and executes with care, you relax into it and become open to being surprised. He frames it as both something to seek out and something worth building into your own work.

How I do my to-dos is an article by Kepano that just briefly desacribes that he writes a weekly todo note. When I started using Obsidian, I first just wrote notes. Notes about topics, projects, meetings and discussions. Then I decided a daily starter note with my todos, short calls/questions/meetings of that day would make sense. But after using that for roughly 3 months, I saw that creating a new to-do note

Buy wisely and cost per use is an article that I resonate with. It is about optimizing 'cost per use' when making a purchase. It is about going for the best price-quality item. Most recently I had a discussion about the fact that most of the jeans I wear get holes after 1-2 years of use. I decided to try out better quality jeans, so I bought 100% cotton jeans from Levis, let's hope these last longer!