Oyma vs Craft

Craft and Oyma both share a deep commitment to native Apple craftsmanship. Neither app settles for clunky, resource-heavy Electron wrappers; both deliver fluid animations, rapid launch times, and thoughtful typography that feel completely at home on macOS.

However, despite their shared aesthetic standard, Craft and Oyma serve fundamentally different purposes and embody opposing architectural philosophies.

Craft is a design-led, visual document editor that reimagines word processing for the modern era. It treats writing as a visual medium: paragraphs are modular blocks that can be styled as cards, organized into multi-column layouts, adorned with decorative cover images, and shared instantly as beautiful web pages. It is optimized for client proposals, design briefs, team wikis, and visual storytelling.

Oyma, by contrast, is a focused knowledge and meeting workspace built around the permanence of plain Markdown text. Instead of wrapping your words in proprietary cloud blocks, Oyma stores every note as an ordinary .md file directly on your Mac’s filesystem. Furthermore, Oyma tackles the reality of modern knowledge work by integrating silent, on-device meeting intelligence: capturing video calls without bots, transcribing speech locally using Whisper, and generating actionable notes inside your Obsidian-compatible vault.

Understanding the difference between a visual block-publishing studio and a sovereign plain-text meeting workspace is key to selecting the right tool.

Document model: Visual block structures vs plain Markdown on disk

The core divide between Craft and Oyma is how documents are constructed, formatted, and stored:

In Craft:

• Documents are built from Blocks. Every paragraph, heading, image, and bullet is a distinct block entity inside Craft’s proprietary document engine.
• Blocks can be grouped into visual cards, nested into expandable sub-pages, or arranged into responsive multi-column layouts.
• Craft connects to a proprietary cloud backend. While notes can be cached locally on Apple devices and exported to Markdown or PDF, your daily documents do not reside as individual .md files in Finder.
• If you stop using Craft, your visual styling, card borders, and multi-column arrangements cannot be natively preserved in plain text without running export routines that flatten your layout.

In Oyma:

• Documents are Plain Markdown Text. Every note is an ordinary .md file stored directly on your hard drive in a folder of your choice.
• There are no proprietary block wrappers or database silos. A document titled Sprint Review exists on disk as Sprint Review.md.
• You can open your notes simultaneously in Obsidian, Visual Studio Code, iA Writer, or standard terminal text editors.
• Links use universal [[WikiLinks]] and metadata uses standard YAML frontmatter. Your notes remain readable and durable across decades, completely independent of Oyma‘s lifespan.

If your primary goal is creating visually stunning documents, client-facing portfolios, or polished project briefs that impress stakeholders, Craft’s block styling is unmatched. If you want a distraction-free writing environment where your thoughts remain permanent, portable text files on your disk, Oyma‘s file-first model is superior.

Meeting capture: Manual typing vs native on-device recording

How the two applications handle spoken meetings represents another fundamental contrast:

In Craft:

• Craft is designed for written composition and visual formatting.
• It contains no audio recording capabilities, no meeting detection, and no speech-to-text transcription engine.
• When taking notes during a Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet call in Craft, you must type manually or record the meeting with a separate utility and paste the text into Craft afterward.

In Oyma:

• Meeting recording is built directly into the core macOS application. On macOS 14.2+, Oyma uses CoreAudio tap APIs to capture both system sound and microphone audio simultaneously without sending an intrusive bot to your call.
• Speech transcription executes 100% on-device using quantized OpenAI Whisper models running on the Apple Silicon Neural Engine. Spoken audio never touches the cloud.
• Oyma transcribes speech in 13 languages, allowing users to record confidential meetings without internet connectivity or security risks.
• Action items, key decisions, and structured summaries are written directly into your vault as Markdown files, linked to your daily notes and project documents.

For managers, consultants, researchers, and engineers whose work revolves around calls, Oyma captures the conversation and structures the notes automatically without pulling your focus away from the discussion.

Artificial intelligence: Metered credits vs sovereign models

The integration of artificial intelligence reflects each application’s business model and infrastructure:

In Craft:

• Craft includes an AI assistant that helps draft content, summarize documents, translate text, and edit tone.
• However, AI access is metered by monthly credits: the free plan provides only 15 AI credits, while the Plus plan ($8–$10/month) provides 50 credits per month. Heavy AI users can quickly deplete their allocation.
• Prompts and document context are transmitted to remote cloud model providers via Craft’s servers.

In Oyma:

• AI in Oyma is sovereign, unlimited, and private.
• You can run open-weight language models (such as Llama 3.2, Mistral, or Qwen 2.5) locally on your Mac using native Ollama integration. Processing runs entirely on your local GPU and Neural Engine with zero data leaving your machine.
• If you prefer frontier reasoning models, you can supply your own API keys (Bring Your Own Key) for Anthropic or OpenAI. Requests travel directly over TLS 1.3 socket connections from your Mac to the model provider, completely bypassing intermediary proxies.
• A built-in egress log provides an auditable real-time record of all network activity, proving that your private notes and meeting transcripts remain strictly on your device.

Ecosystem, platforms, and collaboration

Platform reach and collaboration show distinct strengths for each tool:

Where Craft wins:

• Comprehensive Apple and cross-platform ecosystem: Craft offers world-class native apps for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS, alongside web, Windows, and Android apps.
• Visual publishing and sharing: Craft allows you to publish any document to the web with a single click, creating an elegant public URL with custom branding, analytics, and password protection.
• Real-time collaboration: Craft supports real-time multi-user editing, making it an excellent workspace for small design teams, creative agencies, and families.

Where Oyma wins:

• Direct Obsidian vault compatibility: Point Oyma at an existing Obsidian vault, and both applications work harmoniously on the exact same files without friction or export routines.
• Spreadsheet-style tables: Inline Markdown tables feature column sorting, keyboard navigation, and alignment controls while remaining standard GitHub Flavored Markdown on disk.
• Zero usage limits: Free during private beta for Apple Silicon Macs, with no block limits (Craft free tier caps at 1,500 blocks) and no monthly AI credit meters.
• Complete offline independence: Works completely disconnected from the internet, from transcription to note editing and local AI summarization.

Pricing and ownership comparison

Craft operates on a tiered SaaS subscription:

• Free: Limited to 1,500 blocks, 1 GB storage, and 15 AI credits.
• Plus: $96 per year ($8/month) or $10 monthly, unlocking unlimited blocks and 50 AI credits.
• Family: $180 per year ($18/month) for up to 5 family members.
• Team: $600 per year ($60/month) for up to 10 team members with shared spaces.

Oyma operates on a sovereign hardware model:

• Free during beta: Full access to all features, including meeting recording, Whisper transcription, and local AI.
• Zero server costs: Audio transcription and local AI run on your Mac’s hardware.
• Wholesale cloud AI: If you use cloud models, you pay token costs directly to the model provider with zero markup.
• Permanent files: If you discontinue using Oyma, your notes remain as standard .md files in your Finder folders.

The verdict

Choose Craft if:

• You want an exquisite, design-centric document editor with card styling, multi-column layouts, and one-click web publishing.
• You need seamless mobile apps across iPad and iPhone with Apple Pencil and handwriting support.
• You collaborate with team members or clients who appreciate visual, magazine-like document presentations.
• You are comfortable with notes stored in a proprietary cloud block database and are willing to pay $8 to $10 per month for unlimited blocks.

Choose Oyma if:

• You insist that your notes remain plain Markdown files stored on your local disk with zero vendor lock-in.
• You participate in video calls and need private, on-device Whisper transcription that captures meetings without bots.
• You already use or plan to use Obsidian, and want meeting notes and daily records to land directly inside your existing vault.
• You want unlimited offline AI via Ollama or transparent BYOK cloud inference without monthly block or credit caps.

Where Craft is better

• Exceptionally polished, design-led document editor with publishing and sharing.
• Native Apple apps plus web, Windows and Android.
• Family and team plans for shared spaces.

Thinking of moving? Your notes in Oyma are plain Markdown, so you can always take them with you. Start withgetting started, or read what leaves your Mac.

Looking at other options too? Read our guide to the best Craft alternatives.