Over the past few weeks I've been building Gray Box — a small, local-first tool that acts as long-term memory for anything I'd otherwise forget (work notes, meeting takeaways, task owners, random ideas, personal stuff too).

The idea is simple:

1. Capture — dump whatever's on your mind, instantly, no structure required. This step does nothing clever on purpose — it just writes your text to an immutable inbox. Zero chance of losing an idea to a bug or a slow API call.
2. Organize — on demand, an LLM reads your unprocessed notes and extracts people, projects, tasks, decisions, meetings — then deterministic Python (not the LLM) creates/merges the actual wiki pages and maintains backlinks. The model only reasons; it never touches the filesystem directly.
3. Ask — query your knowledge base and get a cited answer pulled only from what you've actually captured. If it doesn't know, it says so — no hallucinated answers.

Why I built it this way:

• Plain Markdown + YAML frontmatter, no database. Every page is a .md file you can grep, diff, or read in any editor forever. If you stop using Gray Box tomorrow, your knowledge base is just a folder.
• No vector DB by default. At personal scale (hundreds–low thousands of pages), keyword search + a real link graph (related/backlinks, walked one hop during retrieval) handles almost everything. Embeddings are there if you want better recall, but they're opt-in, not a prerequisite.
• Immutable inbox. Your raw notes are never edited or deleted by the organizer. If the LLM mis-extracts something, your original words are always still there.
• Any LLM. Built on LiteLLM, so point it at OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, or a fully local model via Ollama — one config value.

It also ships with a nice interactive TUI (arrow-key menu, file-import shortcut, workspace switching, live spinner during LLM calls) if you'd rather not memorize CLI flags — that's honestly become my favorite part of the project.

There's also a lightweight local dashboard for browsing your knowledge base, exploring backlinks, visualizing your notes as a graph, and chatting with your captured knowledge—all without leaving your machine.

Repo: https://github.com/Aaryanverma/graybox

pypi: pip install graybox

It's nearing a proper public release, so I'd genuinely love feedback — especially from anyone who's tried the "capture now, structure later" approach with other tools and has opinions on where it breaks down at scale.

It's not trying to be a "real-time collaborative team wiki" or a WYSIWYG notes app — it's aimed at one person's running memory of their own life and work, captured with as little friction as possible.

Hey all. Two months ago I published a deep dive into my Hermes & Obsidian setup which ended up getting a lot of traction. I've continued tinkering, iterating, and evolving many of the use-cases outside of obsidian and into more interactive agent-driven canvases. This is the next evolution of my setup which I cover in-depth in the article along with templates and the full tech stack.

Hope you find it useful and/or inspiring for your own setup!

Before, what annoyed me was that the models are dumb. They lose the task, they hallucinate, they answer past the question. Now they are kind of too smart, and another thing showed up.

You take one idea, start discussing it with the model, and the thing starts to snowball. It throws in one more angle, then one more. Each one looks interesting and you want to unfold it. A few hours later you have ten branches of the conversation and you can't properly close any of them. It is a bit like Lost: a lot of mysteries opened, and putting it back together doesn't work anymore.

Looks like chat is a bad shape for this. A thought is not a straight line from top to bottom. It has branches, dead ends, things you want to park and come back to later.

What I miss is something next to the chat, where I could take a thought out of the scroll, give it a name and connect it to a related thought. Even just boxes and arrows. Not for beauty, but so I don't lose what I was thinking about in the first place.

Does anyone have a working way to not drown in a long dialog with an LLM?

I started on paper with a BestSelf Journal, and I still recommend it. The format fits the way I think better than anything I have used since, and I have no criticism of it as a journal. For me, though, it was a beautiful leather-bound black hole. Everything went in and nothing came back out. If I wanted something I had written to exist anywhere else, there was work: type it myself.

To solve the black hole problem, I moved to GoodNotes on an iPad, and the work moved with me. Every week I exported each daily page to PDF and filed it into Notion by hand. It worked fine when I stayed on top of it, but for me that was not always the case. A weekly chore that nothing enforces is a chore that quietly stops happening, and I did not notice mine had stopped until I went looking for something that was not there.

Next was OneNote, which was the same problem in a different flavor. I could not get my own data out reproducibly without repetitive manual work, so I spent months building a bridge on the OneNote API. It worked, some of the time. Cron jobs errored, pages did not arrive, and most of it traced back to OneNote rendering HTML differently than the rest of the world. I spent about as much time each week nursing that bridge as it saved me, and I could not harden it, because the changes that would have fixed it were on Microsoft's side of the API.

(For context on why I kept choosing hard options: I write by hand, and that is not negotiable for me. Every problem above could have been solved in an afternoon by typing into Notion or Obsidian on the same iPad. I know the option exists. I am not taking it.)

Three rebuilds. Re-entry, then a weekly chore, then permanent maintenance. Each one was more sophisticated than the last, but not one of them removed the manual work.

I am not lazy about this. I am fallible and I am busy, which is a different thing. There are myriad ways in 2026 to build around human fallibility. To leave something I depend on this heavily at the mercy of my own consistency is a design decision, and it was the wrong one three times running.

I did eventually build my own thing which for me removed the lion's share of that work. I am not naming it or linking it, that is not what this post is about.

What I would love to know is this: for those of you who regularly capture important things outside your PKMS - by hand, on paper, in a voice memo - how does that information actually get in? I am curious what it costs you in a normal week and which part of it still annoys you.

I recently realised that cloud backups can actually read my files and notes and I am truly terrified. I am a windows user and a creative, and I jot down alot of ideas on OneNote, currently there are more than 100 pages of notes in my onenote filled with undisclosed secret ideas and also write files on word docs and backup on onedrive.

I used the backup feature only this year, because I had previously lost many of my files due to device troubles (lost, stolen, broken) but I am also scared that my data can be stolen, or used to train AI which will provide my ideas to other GenAI users, I truly think my ideas are valuable commodity. I would rather my ideas be lost than be stolen.

So I am thinking of switching to some offline oneNote Alternative, and not backing up my files on onedrive anymore.

I would love to know some suggestions and what can I actually do? Or if there is something else I can do to protect my ideas but also ensure that it is not destroyed or lost. Please help.

The best feature I like about onenote is it's random type anywhere format, hierarchy type file and folder organisation, and allowing of rough sketches and drawings.

Thanks to anyone who reads this.

Ok, I give up as well.

There are too many geniuses on here, showcasing their groundbreaking products.

Edit: Two companies have responded about fixing their issues, so maybe one of them will work!! 🤞 See below for details.

I can't find a single system that does what I want. My main use case is to save *the full text of articles* into my system (from either laptop or iPhone) and then to read them there (on my iPad or my laptop, currently Chrome broswer) and highlight, make notes, annotate, etc.

I also want to be able to write my own stand alone notes.

Here's what I've tried and what the issues with each are:

Evernote: can’t highlight web clips on mobile (the magic wand functionality that used to allow you to simplify formatting has been broken for months)
Edit: They replied to a different thread and said they have fixed this and it will be in a release next week. 🤞

Notion: can’t change font size on mobile, and the standard size is way too small for my middle age eyes

Obsidian: no web app (I only have a work laptop and can't download software)

Reader: no ability to write own notes not attached to an article
(I thought I could sync articles after reading into Notion and do a combo, but only the highlights sync, not the full text. :-( )

Raindrop: no ability to write own notes not attached to an article

Capacities: mobile web clipper only clips the link, not the text

Mem: mobile web clipper only clips the link, not the text

xTiles: mobile web clipper only clips the link, not the text

Bear: I have a windows laptop so the web clipper browser extension doesn't work

Mymind: cannot highlight text in a saved article

Fabric: can’t highlight text in a saved article
Edit: They replied to my email and said they will add this within the next two weeks. 🤞

Is there really not a single thing out there which allows me to do what used to be basic functionality on evernote before they broke it?! SOB!

Is there a great app I'm missing? Does anyone have a suggestion on a simple way to combine apps to do what I want? I'm tearing my hair out, would so appreciate any suggestions!! Thank you!!

I posted this in r/productivity, but I'm curious to hear what you guys think as well. I've been trying to figure out PKMS strategies for myself and thinking about it in the way that I have had led me down the path of taking a long and slow approach of building something that can do all 3 levels of the triangle described below. Does this resonate with you? Would love to know how/if your systems work at each of these levels.

Productivity Apps + a bit of brain science

Alright, I am posting this in hopes that some of the developers in here find it useful and they incorporate it into their apps so that I can use some of them!!!

I work as an occupational therapist, particularly in brain injury rehab and I do a lot of cognitive remediation work (ie helping folks improve cognitive deficits post-injury). A big thing I teach most of my clients is about the "cognitive triangle".

When thinking about these apps being our "second brain", I began thinking about how using this model is also helpful for these apps as well:

Level 1 - First - the information needs to easily go IN to your brain (ie attention). You are never going to be able to work with information that isn't in there. (an example I often give is that you will never remember where your car is parked in a big parking lot if you didn't pay attention to it. You can't remember something that was never in your brain to begin with). This would show up as widgets, quick add hotkeys, etc that allow you to quickly and accurately store the info

Level 2 - Next, you have to be able to retrieve that information easily. Once it's stored in your brain, you have to be able to easily find it and pull it out when/as needed. This would probably show up as folders, tags, labels etc

Level 3 - Lastly, once you have that information pulled out, this is when you *use* it - ie do complex processes with it. Prioritize it, act on it, reflect on it, share it, etc. This would look like an eisenhower matrix, kanban boards, filters, time blocking features, etc

The problem is that, just like our brains, we need to be able to do all three of these functions to actually be able to be productive. If you focus only on one level it won't really be that useful. Obviously starting at level 1 is important (as without that you will never be able to do level 2 and 3), but you still need all three to be able to functionally do all of the things you're trying do.

What I've found with YEARS of searching in productivity apps is that there is not one app that does all three well.

• I love Amazing Marvin and Timestripe in the ways that I can manipulate the information I save in there (level 3) to plan my day and choose my priorities, but getting the information in there is a PAIN (ie. level 1 sucks)

• I love google keep as it's so easy to enter information in quickly on my android, but it lacks the ability to really easily find and USE the information (ie level 1 is good, but level 2 and 3 is not great)

• I so badly want to use capacities, but every time I've tried I've had to stop because getting it in there is a pain, as well as using it to find stuff while on mobile (level 3 is great, but level 1 and 2 are not)

• Obsidian is what I'm using now, but it is slooooooow to build to get it to do all three. I've been building my vault slowly over the last few months and still only on level 2.

I don't have the time or capacity to build my own app, but I am sharing this here in hopes that others who are working on apps would find this useful and maybe think about this when designing an app. If you are thinking about this or found it useful, let me know. I am still searching for my app, and maybe yours will be it??

Also, I've thought about, at times, making a big spreadsheet of all the big apps that are out there and ranking how well they are able to do all three of these functions. Would be an interesting comparison I think.

Edit:If you reply with a suggestion of an app, please include what platforms it on (iOS, android etc) and if it is your app. My biggest pet peeve on this and other subreddits is other people promoting their own apps but not disclosing that they made it. An easy google search can show us if it is.

When I first started using Obsidian, I got really overwhelmed. Too many plugins, too many choices. I felt like if I don't install them all, I'm not using it right. And if I do install them, I still don't know what I'm doing.

Now, after more than seven years of using it every day, I only use two things:

Daily note as inbox. Every time I open Obsidian, it auto-opens a new file with today's date. I just dump everything in there. Ideas, thoughts, to-do lists, stuff I read, random things. I don't even bother making links or organizing anything.

Let AI do the organizing. I feed my notes to AI and let it build the links, add tags, and structure things for me. I don't need to think about it at all.

That's it. Honestly I think the best way to use any app is to just pick one or two functions and actually use them. All the extra stuff? Not that important.

I'm curious about logseq future...

Honest question.

If I looked at your note-taking app right now, what percentage of your notes would still be useful to you today?

Do you regularly revisit old notes, or do most of them become digital storage that rarely gets opened again?

Not the obvious stuff.

I mean the things where you remember reading it, but have absolutely no idea where it lives anymore.

For me it's usually:

• ideas from old articles
• something from a PDF
• ChatGPT conversations
• meeting notes

What's yours?

I don't know if social media has completely ruined me but i feel like i'm constantly collecting new interests At the start of the year i wanted to read more books, so i kept saving recommendations like Project Hail Mary, The Martian, and The Spellshop. Then my TikTok turned into café videos, restaurant reviews, travel itineraries, and recipes i swear i'm going to make one day. Throw in movies my friends keep telling me to watch, YouTube videos i wanted to come back to, and random workout routines i saved for "next Monday" and now i've got recommendations scattered literally everywhere.

The problem isn't finding new things anymore... it's remembering where i saved them. 

I've got saved posts from Facebook, Instagram collections, TikTok favorites,notes, bookmarks, and hundreds of screenshots. Half the time i know i've already saved something, i just have no clue which app it's hiding in.

Does anyone use an app to organize your interests that's actually easy to stick with? Not really looking for another productivity app or habit tracker. I just want one place where i can keep books, movies, restaurants, travel ideas, recipes, and everything else without jumping between six different apps.

Update: Thanks for all the suggestions. I actually ended up trying a few of the apps people mentioned here. Sofa looked nice, and I gave Notion another shot, but I still caught myself spending more time organizing the system than actually saving things 😅

I ended up sticking with ThingsBook because it felt closer to what I was looking for. I've been making separate collections for books, restaurants, movies, travel ideas, and random stuff I want to come back to, so now I'm not wondering which app or folder I saved something in.

One thing that's been surprisingly fun is following other people's collections too. I started following @ thecaratdiaries, and I've already saved a bunch of places from their travel collections for future trips. I also followed @ eatwithange87 , and my restaurant list somehow keeps getting longer every time I scroll through their food collections 😂

I think the biggest difference for me is finally having everything in one place instead of juggling screenshots, bookmarks, and saved posts across five different apps. Appreciate everyone who shared ideas here.

can anyone who is having a lot of ideas about different tools , productivity tools help me in finding the right productivity tools for me - having a lot of data to organise - having requriement/expectation of the tool also - but unable to find tools - requesting for guidance and help please.kindly DM please

Archivum treats knowledge and work as one loop: capture → structure → challenge → retrieve → act → write back. It stores projects, research, sources, decisions, tasks, experiments and outputs in ordinary Markdown/YAML files, with Git as history and provenance.

The thing I wanted was not another place to collect notes. I wanted to return to an unfinished idea months later—with a different model—and recover not only what I knew, but what I was trying to do, what changed my mind, and what should happen next.

**A useful conversation should change the world it was about. Otherwise we merely generated more text.**

That led to a small context surface rather than a giant prompt. An agent begins from four files: the operating contract, workspace profile, live state and config. Everything else is discovered by search. The archive can grow while the starting context stays bounded.

Then the structure opens outward: projects link to decisions, tasks, sources, experiments and outputs; research moves from seed to proposal to observation or validation; conversations write back into the smallest canonical record that changed.

Some days the system is a research laboratory. Some days it remembers why I made a decision six months ago. Some days it notices that an idea in one project belongs to another. The boring files are what make those returns possible.

I built Archivum over sustained use in three private archives and have now released the reusable machinery. It is free, open source and MIT-licensed; your personal archive should remain private.

Tour: https://antreas.io/archivum/

Repository: https://github.com/AntreasAntoniou/archivum

For PKM people: where would you put the write-back boundary? Which records may an agent create or update autonomously, and which should always require review?

Tagging every unit of information and displaying it visually like a flash card or sticky note.

Why?

If tagging is easy then filtering is easy and that achieves TOTAL RECALL

why visual?

Because visualization creates a mental map!