[Bug] Files changed by obsidian which are not in an active editor always tell you that there is a merge conflict

[satkowski]

I'm using the plugin Quadro in combination with Relay. It allows to code documents. If a code is added, the plugin will add a link to that document in a code file which is located somewhere else. If this file is not currently open while it gets edited, and the file gets opened later on in Obsidian, Relay will tell me that the file has a merge conflict even as my Obsidian locally altered the file. I therefore have to manually accept the changes everytime I open such a file.

It would be good if the system could recognize that a change was done locally and doesn't assume that every change was pulled from the server.

Here an example.

1. a freshly added code

2. the merge request from Realy

[satkowski]

To add to that, this problem appears for every Obsidian-global action that works on not opened (i.e., not present in the editor window) files. Another example is the simple renaming of files, which will update the links throughout the complete vault.

[dtkav]

Hey @satkowski -- what' you're experiencing makes sense -- the differ indicates a difference between the CRDT and the file on disk (it is not a conflict with a remote document). When Obsidian or other systems edit the files on disk directly then the edits are not inserted into the CRDT by default (unless the document is open).

I agree it is annoying, and I have some ideas of how to try to reduce differ over-activity by integrating more deeply into Obsidian (and accepting some writes on disk as CRDT edits), but so far I've found that it is a bit more complicated than I expected (especially with renames).

I hadn't seen Quadro before -- thanks for the link.

[satkowski]

I, unfortunately, expected as such, and I totally get the problems that you mentioned. However, this makes Relay, especially with plugins that work rather "globally" over your complete vault, a bit difficult to use. While I see that other plugins don't necessarily need to be supported by Relay, default/core functionality of Obsidian should be.

So, I hope that you find a good and hopefully a simple solution for that in the near future ;) Until then, I can use Relay only for smaller folders/projects.

[JoelAnderson-UU]

I'm struggling with the same thing. And now with the arrival of Obsidian "Bases" (still currently in Catalyst pre-release), it will be much easier (and hence more common) to make changes to properties throughout the entire vault.

In some cases, a workaround might be to ask, after a major set of changes, that all collaborators use "Delete from vault" to delete the local Shared Folder and all of its contents, and then do a fresh install from the remote location.

The problem is that this doesn't address the fact that if I'm the one making the changes to notes without opening them in my vault, they never become part of the remote version.

This remains the reason why I prefer using Peerdraft, which does handle this: https://www.peerdraft.app

[quicly]

Unfortunately, this is exactly my use case. I set everything up for our collaborative qualitative research using Quadro and Relay, only to realize that the main functionality is not supported by Relay. I understand that implementing the tracking of background changes can be difficult, but it should at least be mentioned as a major limitation on the plugin page.

[Majumafoo]

Hey @satkowski -- what' you're experiencing makes sense -- the differ indicates a difference between the CRDT and the file on disk (it is not a conflict with a remote document). When Obsidian or other systems edit the files on disk directly then the edits are not inserted into the CRDT by default (unless the document is open).

I agree it is annoying, and I have some ideas of how to try to reduce differ over-activity by integrating more deeply into Obsidian (and accepting some writes on disk as CRDT edits), but so far I've found that it is a bit more complicated than I expected (especially with renames).

I hadn't seen Quadro before -- thanks for the link.

I'd like to suggest a “force push” option to upload all local files to the server.
In cases like renames that affect many files, manually overwriting the CRDT state feels like a practical, low-friction solution — even if just as a temporary measure.
I realize this issue could be more complex than this, but I wanted to share the thought.

Thanks for your work on this!

[henrychong-ai]

I'm having this same issue as well. My primary use case for using Obsidian (and Relay to sync) is to allow for my files to be directly read/write by AI, i.e. Claude Code. However whenever CC makes an edit to any Obsidian file, it causes CRDT to show a merge conflict with the "changed local file".

I wrote a CC hook to always open the file in Obsidian that it is about to edit, which prevents merge conflicts from happening when CC is editing a file, but I still get lots of persistent merge conflict issues when uploading new files, where the relay server shows a merge conflict error against a blank file.