Personal Knowledge Management - discussions on the topics of Obsidian, Roam, Zettelkasten and other methods

Main

Obsidian

For /obsidian users looking to introduce AI in a free & local way, I made a tutorial evaluating the various plugins and how to get started with smart connections ✨

I hope it helps, the semantic searching is 🤯 

How To Add AI To Obsidian 📝 (Free Private Local) 🤖 Smart Connections
https://youtu.be/ce2PVHyuRtA

Founders

chatting with notes: 

I can take any note and instantly use it as context for an LLM conversation. useful for guided learning. 

LLM output can easily be saved as a new note, although I don't like doing this: my notes either reference sources or my own interpretation or elaboration of things I've read from sources.

This is a really interesting and important concept: 

Having your notes be from yourself and only use the AI as a process step for output, not to generate more input for the AI. 

This prevents the recursive self-training loops from biasing your notes for future use in newer, better AI models.

does anyone know of a notes tool or notes extensions that update in the background? i like having my notes structured(eg i have a cool template on /obsidian) but doing the "digital gardening" work to make sure i'm taking notes/tagging notes in the right place gets in my way sometimes

i want the computer/a notes tool to just understand the context around the notes i'm taking and do the tagging for me in the background

similarly i listened to a podcast from the notion cofounder the other day talking about how ai should be updating dbs for us & i think this in particular is a great use case for that

slightly different than the problem i'm describing below but i've been missing block references from roam research so much that i got a free trial again today, and it's already feeling so good

what i love about block refs is i feel less of a desire to go back and edit the strucure of my notes, i can just move forward and continue threading convos/topics by using block refs as necessary(either as an alias in a sentence or as an embed to show i'm continuing the task/convo below)

slightly different than the problem i'm describing below but i've been missing block references from roam research so much that i got a free trial again today, and it's already feeling so good

what i love about block refs is i feel less of a desire to go back and edit the strucure of my notes, i can just move forward and continue threading convos/topics by using block refs as necessary(either as an alias in a sentence or as an embed to show i'm continuing the task/convo below)

https://warpcast.com/dylsteck.eth/0xfe2f57bd

really dissapointed by the educational content on PKM systems. seems like vast majority of influencers just really like the "idea" of having a second brain - the content seems hollow, more akin to "gear acquisition syndrome" than anything else. 

are there any serious researchers who just happen to educate on the process on the side? best example I know is Andy Matuschak. any others?

really dissapointed by the educational content on PKM systems. seems like vast majority of influencers just really like the "idea" of having a second brain - the content seems hollow, more akin to "gear acquisition syndrome" than anything else. 

are there any serious researchers who just happen to educate on the process on the side? best example I know is Andy Matuschak. any others?

https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes

I built my own bespoke second brain app - just for me. I've been using it for over 4 months, capturing thousands of short notes that I can freely explore - in a graph, as a map or using an LLM. 

the coolest thing about doing something like this is having a piece of software that is truly bespoke - in this case perfectly adapted to ways I naturally like to think and work. 

for example, a few weeks back I took a few hours to hack together a highlighter chrome extension. I can use it to highlight anything I read on the web and it automatically appears in the app in real time. I can have it open on another screen and instantly see all other notes I've taken that are related by the context (this uses AI). I find this workflow powerful because I love reading and writing, but I hate organising - so I get AI to do it for me. 

what's the last thing you've built for yourself?

Anyone have a workflow that incorporates spaced repetition or recall here?

I have a really weird diversity of note taking that kinda drives me nuts:

Obsidian - Long form deep thinking
Pocket pen and notebook - Brain dump, anything goes
Raycast notes - Computer notepad 
Apple notes - iPhone equivalent of Raycast notes

I need to sort this 😅 What do you use?

Grand Theft Auto Database

Anytype Review

1. A “local-first” app should not take longer on first load than Notion. Needs better caching.

2. They need a Collection creation action that lets you create the Type that lives in that collection at the same time. This is necessary to replace /database in notion.

Both of these are fixable🤞

Convinced the best “tools for thought” are whatever gives you the bravery to spend a lot of time with your own thoughts.

Experimenting with auto-populating folders and semantic search in my new PKM app product that I'm building. Each note you take automatically lands in one or more topics based on semantic similarity, and you can search your whole knowledge base with natural language.

What's the first tip you would give someone who wants to start a connected notes system like Obsidian/Roam/Zettelkasten?

gm connectooors 🌐 starting a new channel for discussions on personal knowledge management (PKM) systems - including digital (Notion, Obsidian, Roam) and physical (Zettelkasten, Antinet)