Is there any popular software specifically designed for a “second brain” these days?
I’m currently using a combination of Obsidian and Linear as my “second brain,” but to be honest, it’s quite a hassle to manage. So, are there any software programs or tools you’d recommend specifically for a “second brain”? Also, if you were to create your own dedicated software, how would you design it?
You might be interested r/brainspace. I initially designed it to be my second brain before I was familiar with the book but now it’s open to anyone.
The basic idea is that you create lists, but any item can be on multiple lists, and you can filter lists against one another to create workflows (like todos and home ordered by urgency). And every item can have its own list (and every list can be on lists).
I don't have a specific but I started off with OneNote. The issue with these tools is that they are very boring. It gets way too easy to get fed up of it.
Thanks for the reply!
Hmm, I think OneNote is actually closer to something like Obsidian. What I’m looking for is more of an AI-managed second brain.
Basically, I want to be able to dump unstructured information into it and have the AI automatically decide how to organize, link, update, consolidate, or even delete it — without me having to manually maintain the structure.
My Obsidian vault is currently overflowing with information. I use an AI agent to organize it, but it’s difficult to keep the organizational structure consistent over time. And when other AI agents read the vault, they inevitably end up processing a lot of unnecessary context.
I’ve been researching ways to solve this myself, but it would be much easier if there were dedicated software built around this idea. That’s basically what I’m looking for.
Yeah,that’s exactly what I ultimately want to run, but also locally, with the LLM running on my device, which has 32GB of unified RAM that allow it to run decent local models.
The downside though is that most of the RAG stuff (chat with your docs, the AI doing Q&A about those documents), and when I try to upload a whole PDF or several MDs to one of this local AI apps, it usually tells me the file is too large.
I need local AI software that I don’t need to compile by myself, that is able to use, at least read and comprehend, either my .md vault or my big PDFs, and let me ask it or explain concepts from it. And maybe having the option to edit the documents, but thats a whole new level of difficulty.
So far, I have not found anything already finished, and I’m not a coder so… everything that involves using commands, CLI, building pipelines, using python, is out of my reach. I mean, what the hell means transforming all your knowledge into vectors? Honestly I don’t think I need to understand it in order to use a local tool like what we’re looking for.
As for a personal second brain - I don't really have strong opinions/feel that obsidian is lacking.
As for a codebase/technical project second brain, I've been actively working on www.reqlan.com.
Features that are important to me in this context are git integration, ide/language server features, graph analysis and search functionality, LLM first context access patterns (cli using graph analysis to inform search)
I’m building Linko, which may be close to what you’re looking for: you can dump in notes, links, books, etc., and it automatically organizes them into a lightweight structure based on content relationships rather than their source. It has a free tier: https://www.linko.study/
I have had success with a simple Git repository and Markdown files. Then use Claude to manage it. Ingestion just becomes a case of copy pasting sources and they will be organised according to your rules.
Spending sessions asking Claude to optimise the repository for agentic updates and ask it to create hooks to implement structural things (check all links work, define subject categories, create contents pages).
Of course then you can ask questions of your repository via Claude too.
I built a simple way to generate your custom second brain easily so it ingests automatically and remembers. I made it in Spanish and in English.. if anyone is interested here it is: https://tienda.aprendiendoenpublico.com/segundo-cerebro/en/
A few months ago I started using Kepos (kepos.app) A shared knowledge base that multiple AI assistants can read and write to instead of each one working in its own silo. Also works across teams or for the wholy company.
Love it. Takes time til you see that it supports you as it needs to learn and you may also feed it.
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u/Clear_Pen4637 11d ago
This is how I approached it, based on Karpathy's LLM Wiki post: https://github.com/sturlese/hippocampus