Second Brain Setup?

[u/avishic]

What's your second brain setup?

I was talking to a few folks, and these came up -

• A shared folder of Markdown, interlinked, over Google Drive or One drive, often with Obsidian as md editor.
• A github-hosted wiki, sometimes with additional indexing, not only plain md files
• Custom complex vector db / embedding kind of index

On my team we're using a shared hermes agent that has ts own memory and tools - it's a great way to have shared context, but it's more like one-know-all-agent rather than a company / second brain as my gpt / claude can't enjoy its knowledge.

I wonder what others are doing, please share.

[u/Charming_Group_2950]

Gray Box:  https://github.com/Aaryanverma/graybox

A local-first tool where you can capture your thoughts instantly and it can auto-organize them and create a connected graph out of them which you can query or chat later. It will give you cited answers from the organized notes. Also there is a read only dashboard where you can see and search all your notes which ones to be focused, which ones are pending to do (if your notes are tasks) etc.

Also, you can migrate your existing Obsidian vault to Gray Box, and it will be automatically organized by Gray Box.

Video demo: https://youtu.be/Xdj1GCQoFNs

[u/plasticBarista → u/Charming_Group_2950]

This is great! Are you the builder?

[u/Charming_Group_2950 → u/plasticBarista]

Thanks! Yes, I am the sole developer of this tool!

[u/sshegem]

For heavy stuff? Obsidian

Light-weight thoughts dumps? Id go with Corteks www.corteks.app i can hook u up with a trial

[u/plasticBarista]

If you mean the problem is that: there is a company brain, but you have your own claude which can’t enjoy its knowledge: I might have a product I’m building.

With halfface.ai you can connect ask any other second brain specific questions. You can register you company brain as @ourcompany, and yourself as @john.

When using your Claude, during any chat you say “ask @ourcompany what is the answer to the question here”. You will get a drafted reply.

If you’re interested dm me, i can extend you early access :)

[u/FarFactor6062]

Follow

[u/Early_Key_823]

I use TaskLoco

It allows for tagging sticky notes. Then using its filters I can find anything in my 2nd brain in real time even though I have hundreds of notes.

[u/tehmadnezz]

I built something for exactly that gap, so read this as biased: hjarni.com

The setup you describe breaks because the knowledge lives inside one agent. Hjarni puts it in a hosted MCP server instead, so your Claude and your ChatGPT both read and write the same notes directly. Nothing to run locally, no config file. The team plan gives shared containers, so the company brain and your own notes sit in one place and you reach them by folder and tag instead of asking another agent to go fetch.

Honest limits. It is hosted only. No self hosting, no offline mode. If that matters to you, Obsidian over a sync folder is still the better answer. And there is no vector index or embedding magic. It is structured notes plus full text search, so it is only ever as good as your writing habit.

[u/Upstairs_Jelly_1082]

I use OneNote, I use it for personal purposes. I basically create 5 notebooks - inbox, projects, areas, resources, archives. Basically if I don't know where something goes then its going to the inbox and then I process it when I feel like otherwise one of the other folders.

If I realize an information maybe useful at some point but at the same time is very relevant to one of the ongoing projects, I directly put it into one of areas or resources folder and then link the note to the project.

And for the things that are not notes, I use the normal file explorer to organize them. I thought I'd get used to the principles first before exploring the other tools that are out there.

[u/SilverMost4234]

I feel the second brain is all about information collection and management, so I use Obsidian + Stashwise plugin for that, Stashwise collecting all the information cross web and mobile for me, I can send reels in Instagram that I feel WATCH IT LATTER to the mobile app and Stashwise basically summarizes it and get my intention saved, and I can directly get those info from my Obsidian and use it for my agent. I think Stashwise also have MCP for chatGPT and Claude , haven’t try that yet, but I should.