[begemotz]

I am not sure what the question here actually is -- the title compares apples to oranges (e.g. Obsidian uses YAML for meta-data but markdown is the markup language). Then in the post itself, it sounds like you ask a question about how to organize your note storage. Separate questions with some potential overlap.

A couple of questions -- what didn't you like about Obsidian? Have you considered Emacs and Org-mode?

[heigh]

I think you answered my question, although indirectly. I thought there was competing standards (if that's even the right word, I don't know) for note-taking.

YAML is more for configuration and meta-data, so my original question didn't make a lot of sense.

You've helped clear my confusions so for that, thanks so much!

As for Obsidian, I just wasn't super keen having a whole extra app just for my note-taking. I like simple Notepad++ (or Geany, now that I'm moved to nix), as it can work on any files, not just text/MD/note docs.

[dtkav]

Even if you don't want to use Obsidian, the file format of yaml frontmatter (yaml in a --- block) and then markdown below is a solid format.