Nice to see fellow dual paperpile and obsidian users on the forums. Have you tried Jon Gauthier’s citations plugin- it started out as a zotero integration extension but he’s been generalizing it and I find it’s useful with paperpile’s bibtex workflow. It allows me to insert citations as cite keys, as well as create literature notes that I can paste highlights from pdfs in paperpile in markdown format.
Still no automated bibliography export though until Gauthier adds the functionality in his extension (supposedly in the works) or the paperpile team ends up implementing a cite key solution in their plugin (Also on the Roadmap- though as you note, our friendly paperpile dev team, while managing to create the best citation manager in my opinion, do tend to be slower than we would like).
Perhaps @Kyle_Marriott has additional insights? We’re discussing obsidian paperpile workflows in another thread.