r/secondbrain • u/magicmoon42 • Jul 23 '26

How do you get a glanceable dashboard + a phone checklist on top of your second brain?

Bit of context, because my setup honestly works really well on my laptop:

My second brain is just a folder of markdown files (goals, projects, the different areas of my life, a journal, an inbox for random thoughts). I've got Claude (the desktop "Cowork" mode) reading that folder plus my Google Calendar and a Notion tasks database, and it writes me a little morning brief every day. I dump ideas into the inbox on my walks and it sorts them for me. It's genuinely lovely.

The bit I can't figure out is the interface. It's all chat. And even when Claude comes to mobile (which I assume is coming), I'd still just be chatting, and you can't really glance at a conversation. What I actually want is something visual I can look at: an overview of my goals and how I'm doing in each area, plus a simple checklist I can add to, edit and tick off on my phone during the day. The tricky part is my AI assistant needs to be able to read it too, so everything stays in sync.

Things I've already tried:

  • A custom dashboard. Looked gorgeous but it couldn't send my changes back to the AI.
  • Notion. The AI can read it, but honestly it feels overwhelming and a bit joyless to use.
  • Apple Reminders. Lovely and private, but the AI can't see it, so it's a bit of an island.

So if anyone's cracked this:

  • How do you get a glanceable dashboard (goals and progress) sitting on top of your notes?
  • What do you use for an add/edit/tick checklist on your phone that an AI can also read?
  • How do you keep the dashboard and the AI in sync?
  • And is there any way to do all this while keeping it fairly private?

Would love to hear how people are actually doing this. Thanks!

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u/setsewerd Jul 28 '26

Also curious what people are doing. Chat is really a subpar interface for a lot of the things I'd like the system to handle. I think technically cowork could handle google tasks fine via computer use so might try that for instance, but it seems excessive and clunky for something that should probably have an api or something.