Most teams end up paying for a stack: a doc tool, a whiteboard, a notes app, and a separate AI assistant that cannot see any of them. Dim0 puts all four jobs on one board. Rich documents like Notion, an infinite canvas like Miro and Excalidraw, portable Markdown notes like Obsidian, and an AI agent that reads the surrounding board before it acts. It is open source, so you can inspect it, fork it, and self-host it with your own model keys.
None of the tools below are bad. Each is excellent at part of this. The point of Dim0 is that you stop switching between them, and that the AI works on real content in context instead of in a detached chat window.
How Dim0 compares at a glance
| Capability | Dim0 | Notion | Miro | Excalidraw | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infinite spatial canvas | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Basic |
| Rich documents & notes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| AI that acts on the board | Yes | Doc-only | Limited | No | Plugins |
| Real-time collaboration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Paid add-on |
| Open source | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No | No | Yes | Local only |
| Portable Markdown | Yes | Export | No | No | Yes |
“Basic”, “Limited” and “Local only” mark real caveats, not zeroes. The full trade-offs live in each comparison below.
Instead of Notion
Notion is the best doc-and-database workspace there is, but it thinks in pages and lists, not in space, and its AI stays inside a document. Dim0 keeps the rich docs and adds an infinite canvas plus an agent that can act on everything around it. Read Dim0 vs Notion.
Instead of Miro or Excalidraw
Miro and Excalidraw are whiteboards: great for shapes, arrows, and sticky notes, but the objects on them are not real documents and there is no agent that understands the board. Dim0 is a whiteboard where a node can be a live document, a chart, or a mini-app, and the AI works on them in place. Excalidraw and Dim0 are both open source; Miro is not. Dim0 vs Miro and Dim0 vs Excalidraw.
Instead of Obsidian
Obsidian is local-first Markdown knowledge, private and portable, but it is an empty box: real-time collaboration is a paid add-on, and it does not help you think spatially out of the box. Dim0 keeps the Markdown portability and adds a shared canvas, real-time multiplayer, and AI on the same surface. Read Dim0 vs Obsidian.
Dim0 is the only option that is all of the above at once, and open source you can run yourself.
