Are there plans for mobile apps? In particular, obsidian and nextcloud don't seem to work well together on android. Changes made to files via obsidian don't get picked up by nextcloud unless I manually go sync the file. This might just be nextcloud's app dropping the ball.

Sounds good, I'm trying out the app and seeing if I can really use it to replace obsidian, and I might dedicate some time to contribute if I end up using it. I agree with your assessment that obsidian's customization with its plugin eco system leads to it becoming a side project that you have to baby instead of just a note taking app.

I don't use a lot of plugins on obsidian, but I use rely on a few that make organizing notes easier, mainly:

1. Daily notes: I really like being able to click one button to create a note with a date and organized into date folders, these are usually quick notes that reference bigger notes. Not being able to do it with a click means I just won't do it at all, so my quick notes could very quickly become a giant list of unorganized files in the vault root.
2. Templates: not a huge deal, I can manually apply templates from a template .md file, but it's a nice feature.

On sync, two problems with using "whatever" to sync entire vault:

1. I have to install and configure syncing on every device, and make sure they're connected
2. Merge conflict and sync order! I used to use seafile I sync, and I can't tell you how frustrating it was to lose entire notes because they were overwritten externally.